Highest Risk: 2025-2026 - with HR McMaster
Upon graduation from the US Military Academy in 1984, HR McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the US Army for thirty-four years. He retired as a lieutenant general in June 2018.
From 2014 to 2017, General McMaster designed the future army as the director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the deputy commanding general, futures, of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). As commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, he oversaw all training and education for the army’s infantry, armor, and cavalry force.He commanded the Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012; he commanded the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq from 2005 to 2006; he was also deployed in Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991.
General McMaster holds a PhD in military history. He was an assistant professor of history at the US Military Academy. He is author of the bestselling books Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.
General McMaster is the host of two podcasts: Battlegrounds: International Perspectives on Crucial Challenges and Opportunities and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution.
He is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he also teaches at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. And he chairs an advisory board at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] Invading Taiwan would be kind of, it's a tough thing. Taiwan is an island the size of Maryland. It's mountainous in the west. It's densely populated in massive urban areas in the east. There are only a couple of good landing places, only a couple of months when the seas are amenable to a cross strait invasion.
It's about 150 miles across. Now they're, if they're looking at a full invasion and subjugation of Taiwan, it's not clear to me that they could pull it off. It'd be a rude awakening for them that is analogous to the rude awakening. That the Russians have with the re invasion of Ukraine.
Before we start today's conversation, just one housekeeping note. In our next episode, we have Tyler Cowen coming on the podcast, who's the host of one of my favorite podcasts called Conversations with Tyler. He also runs the Marginal Revolution, [00:01:00] which if you do not read Marginal Revolution, the economics blog.
You must, I highly recommend it. He's done a bunch of other things. He's one of the greatest teachers I know on everything from markets and economics to the future of technology and now artificial intelligence. We're going to talk about a lot of topics with Tyler. If you have a question for him, please send it to dan at unlocked.
fm. That's dan at unlocked. fm. Please keep your question to under 30 seconds. Just record it as a voice memo. And send it in and we will pick a couple of them to ask Tyler in our next episode. And now onto today's show. General H. R. McMaster is known to be able to break down succinctly just about any military operational scenario.
But it's not just military operations and strategy that he can unpack. H. R. McMaster also has a deep sense of history of military affairs. And he served at the most senior levels of government developing and implementing a [00:02:00] national security strategy. And he's also commanded troops on the front lines in military theaters around the world.
Upon graduation from West Point in 1984, H. R. served as a commissioned officer in the U. S. Army for 34 years. He retired as a Lieutenant General in June of 2018. He had many posts in the military, too many to list here. We'll post them all in the show notes, but he commanded the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force in Kabul in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012.
He commanded the third armored Calvary Regimen in Iraq from 2005 to 2006. That's actually where the model for the surge, what ultimately became the surge strategy in Iraq was first tested. And it was back in the early years of the Iraq war that I first met General McMaster in Baghdad. It wasn't his first time in Iraq.
He was also deployed in Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. H. R. holds a Ph. D. in military history. He was an assistant professor of [00:03:00] history at West Point. He's the author of numerous best selling books, including Battlegrounds. The fight to defend the free world, and also dereliction of duty. Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam.
A few books have had more of an influence on me, and my world view, and how I think about The government and civilian military relations than HR's dereliction of duty. I highly recommend it We'll post the link to that as well in the show notes He's also the host of battlegrounds, which is a podcast inspired by the name of his book It's called battlegrounds international perspectives on crucial challenges and opportunities and he's a regular on goodfellas A podcast produced by the hoover institution.
I highly recommend you subscribe to both of these He teaches at Stanford University where he's affiliated with Hoover. He also teaches at the business school at Stanford and he's the chair of an advisory board at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. So a lot here to learn from HR. As we return to an age of geopolitical conflict, [00:04:00] are our business leaders and policymakers and the markets and the media.
Undervaluing geopolitical risk, real geopolitical risk, where things could really unravel soon. Not off in the distance, but 2025 or 2026. That's what we get into today with General H. R. McMaster. This is Call Me Back.
Pleased to welcome To this podcast, my longtime friend and sort of intellectual mentor, even though he doesn't know it, uh, retired general H. R. McMaster, former national White House national security advisor, historian, host of one of the best podcasts I listened to on, on military affairs and global affairs called Battlegrounds.
We'll put the link to it in the show notes and also co host of one of my favorite podcasts, Goodfellas. And, um, and the [00:05:00] author of several books, but one of which had a huge influence, uh, on my thinking, I read out a decade ago, decade and a half ago, dereliction of duty, which we'll talk about, uh, near the end of this conversation, HR, thanks for joining us.
Hey, Dan, great to be with you. And man, this is a great podcast. Thanks so much for the service you're providing here. Thank you. Thanks for, thanks for doing this. We've had a number of offline conversations over the years. So, uh, so I appreciate you willing to do one of these, uh, online. I hope you are as candid in the, uh, In the online as you are in the offline, but totally understand if you have to be more restrained.
You're going to be candid. That's, that's why I was only, I think at the white house for 13 months. Exactly. Okay. So, so let's jump into it. I, I, one thing I mentioned to you offline is I was, um, recently having lunch with a friend of mine who has done. Um, let's call it a lot of geopolitical, uh, uh, [00:06:00] engage in a lot of geopolitical advisory work one way or the other, um, and has the ear of a number of, uh, business, business leaders and has been doing it for a number of years.
And he said that he used to tell business leaders that they were over valuing and over interpreting geopolitical risk. That is to say, the reality is the nature of. flare ups in geopolitics, you know, as, as, as horrendous and awful and traumatic and gut wrenching as a terrorist attack may be in any part of the world.
He argued the reality is he would tell business leaders, it's not going to affect the macro. global economy that much, it's not really going to have long term impact on the markets, may have short term impact, but not long term or even medium term impact, uh, and that you're, you business leaders, you, the markets are overreacting in the moment to these flare ups.
And he says, what we're dealing with now, [00:07:00] sort of, let's, let's make the starting point, the, the Russia Ukraine war, which is now over, over a year long, but you could have maybe say it was sometime before that is he, he says, what we're experiencing now, he thinks business leaders are. undervaluing and underestimating the impact of an under interpreting geopolitical events.
So, what's different now, if he's right, A, do you agree with him, and B, if he's right, why, why, why, why is the business world in the, why are the, why is the business world in the markets undervaluing geopolitical events now relative to pre Russia Ukraine? Yeah, he's right, and I think he's making the observation kind of late to the game.
I mean, I think that this was. It is clear that I think business financial leaders have undervalued geostrategic risk. I mean, going back to the turn of the century, because we had some harbingers of, of, uh, of future armed conflict, future geostrategic competition that we just didn't pay attention to because during the nineties we were over optimistic and we became complacent.
We [00:08:00] were over optimistic. Based on, you know, some good reasons, right? We had, we'd won the Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed, China, of course, was not yet really a clear competitor in, in the 1990s. That didn't really occur until the, the vast increases in the size of their economy through the 1990s and especially after World Trade Organization accession in 2001.
Uh, and, and, uh, and we, we've demonstrated our military prowess in the Gulf War. So we, so we thought, Hey, you know, an arc of history is guaranteed the primacy of our freedom and societies. Overclosed authoritarian systems. We thought, okay, well, who's a great power for it to compete with us right now? Right?
This is what, you know, this is what some people call it at the time are unipolar moment, but some people forgot the moment part of that and thought that we were going to have predominant power and influence into the foreseeable future. And then we thought our, our technological prowess, our technological military prowess would guarantee our security.
And those warnings started to happen at the turn of the century, right? We had the [00:09:00] largest mass murdered terrorist attack in history on 9 11. Terrorists perpetrated that attack bypassing our technological military prowess. And of course, uh, inflicted tremendous damage on us, murdering, you know, a third, you know, 3000 Americans, but also taking trillions of dollars out of our economy.
Right? So how about Vladimir Putin coming into power in the year 2000, kind of laying it out in his own initial speech, but then. But then, uh, then taking a series of actions in the early 2000s, poisoning a presidential candidate in, in, uh, in Ukraine, various assassinations, a sustained campaign of subversion, um, massive denial of service attacks on Estonia, invasion of Georgia in 2008, I mean, he laid it out in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.
What did we do? Nothing. We were complacent. You know, I, I could give many, many other examples of, uh, of China's, uh, behavior that demonstrated. That they were applying various forms of economic aggression against us and not playing by the rules not becoming the so called responsible [00:10:00] stakeholder Uh, you could say the same about iran's nuclear program For example of their sustained proxy wars against us as they were complicit, uh in the killing of of of 600 uh american servicemen and women in in iraq, uh during the during the iraq war I mean, so I think we've just been not paying attention dan and to ask your second part of the question why?
I think it's just optimism bias, confirmation bias, you know, self, self deception, you know, and, and, um, and I think if you see what happened to some companies with a complete rending, uh, of the, of the economic relationship with Russia, like BP's massive losses, for example. You know, some things in life are, are black swans, but hey, this was a pink flamingo.
I mean, this was right in front of us for a long time. So you say you talk about confirmation bias or, or recency bias. So for, I mean, you're a historian [00:11:00] and one of your many hats through almost all of modern history, the West has been mired in some kind of great power conflict, whether it got cold or hot, there was some kind of great power conflict.
And then from the fall of, you know, the fall of the Soviet Union until the Russia Ukraine war, we had 30 years of no great power. What, what you're saying, there were signs of it. And, and so some commentators, uh, were late to it, um, and some of our government leaders were late to it, but there were, but, but it certainly wasn't like the sort of visible concrete form of great power conflict that had existed through the cold war and through the first world war.
And we can go on and on and on back through history. So we kind of had this 30 year, this three decade quasi break, not full break, but quasi break. And many of our leaders in government today. In the West came of [00:12:00] age during that time. That's when they developed their skills. That's when they developed their knowledge base.
That's when they, that's what they knew. And suddenly we're in this new period. What feels like a new period as it relates to the U S and China and the U S and Russia. So first of all, how would you characterize this new period? And how much of a problem is it that our, that our leaders have no real experience with this kind of environment?
It's a big problem. It's, and it's a big problem because we have two revanchist revisionist powers on the Eurasian landmass who are determined to rewrite the rules of international discourse economically from a security perspective. I would define human rights for, for, for example, uh, and are promoting, uh, their authoritarian, uh, and in the case of China, mercantilist model, uh, in a way that is, that would, that would be to our profound disadvantage if they're able to succeed.
And so the stakes are quite high, but what's happened is, as you suggested, [00:13:00] Dan, is that our complacency has led to a couple of things. First of all, it's led to, I think, a lack of strategic competence. Our skills in competition have atrophied. In fact, we became so complacent in the 90s that we vacated. Key, key arenas of competition that are critical to, to our future, to future prosperity and, and preserving peace and, and security.
And, and that, that those are economic arenas of competition, for example, but also even physical arenas of competition. The South China Sea, for example, we're China laid claim to the ocean. And, and so I think that we are behind, uh, and, and I think it's sort of the, as a result of, of this overoptimism and maybe.
Soft headed cosmopolitanism, or whatever you want to call it, you know, in these terms like the global community and the international community. We've talked ourselves into this idea that the world operates as a condominium of [00:14:00] nations who cooperate through international organizations to solve global issues.
That's not the case. So Gary Cohn and I wrote this essay in 2017. Uh, entitled, uh, America first doesn't mean America alone. I think it was in a Wall Street Journal and there's a subsequent, I think in the, in the times along the same theme in which we said, Hey, we have to compete. You know, competition doesn't mean confrontation, but it, but it means that we have to reenter some of these arenas of competition.
For example, you know, when you think of an organization like the World Health Organization, Why would that be controversial? Should we work together on global health? Well, I mean, China actively subverted that organization like it did the human rights, uh, council. So I, I think we have to recognize, you know, the need to compete and the need for us to get some of our muscle memory back to do it because our muscles are at atrophy and, and I think what's even worse, the second factor is that over confidence, of course, maybe a touch of hubris in the nineties led to some profound [00:15:00] disappointments.
Right. It led to a disappointment associated with, uh, the horrible terrorist attacks in 9 11. But how about the disappointment of the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Dan, I think we first met in Baghdad, 2003, like right after Baghdad fell, you know, and, and, and what was, what I think we ought to talk more about is not whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in 2003, but who the heck thought it would be easy?
Because remember a lot of people thought it would be easy, you know, and so so we were flying too high in the 90s Then we flew too. Well, you know as a financial crisis hit as we had an opioid epidemic You know as as we you know, as we saw social media increased the vitriol of our of our partisan discourse and polarizes and and we saw you know identity politics and new forms of of reified philosophies and critical theories and post modernist theories interact with Old forms of bigotry and racism and and draw straight from one another right create centripetal forces that are [00:16:00] spinning us apart I mean, so You know, it was a bit so we went from going being too high to too low And now we have to regain not only our competence but also our confidence You know our confidence in who we are as a people Our confidence in our democratic institutions and processes and our principles, but also our confidence that we can develop and implement a competent approach to foreign policy and national security.
Okay. So I want to get back to that in terms of what it would look like in a moment. But before we do, uh, you say that there was, you know, we spent a lot of time debating whether or not we should have gone into Iraq in 2003 and not enough. Looking at why we thought it would be so easy, I tend to agree with you.
Today, there seems to be, and you and I have talked about this, this, it's, it's the only topic on which there's a real bipartisan consensus, which was confronting China in some way. And the two, the two, the two issues where you can, the only two [00:17:00] issues where you can find bipartisan consensus today in Washington.
It's on confronting China and reigning in big tech and on big tech. There may be a bipartisan consensus that big tech needs to be reigned in, but each party has a different concern about big tech and therefore it makes a sort of remedy for dealing with big tech, at least breached in a bipartisan sense, difficult to imagine.
But that's not necessarily the case with China. I was struck by that first. Uh, uh, hearing the congressional hearing, uh, Mike Gallagher's committee, um, on China, uh, about a month ago, and, and basically the Democrats and the Republicans, and there was that TikTok hearing also, I think that was maybe in the Commerce committee.
Um, in the house, Democrats and Republicans. Basically. It's the only time in a long time I've seen Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Basically, they could have been interchangeable, uh, in terms of the toughness they were talking so. There's a consensus on confronting China in some way. Do you worry that, like the consensus before [00:18:00] the Iraq war about how easy it would be, which was also a bipartisan consensus, A, we need to go into Iraq, and B, the sense that it would be easy.
Do you worry that there's not enough internal discussion about what confronting China will look like, and are we kind of Um, you know, um, tiptoeing into a military, a military confrontation, a head on military confrontation that we're not fully imagining the risks around and we'll regret, like, well, why weren't we having a more robust internal conversation before we let things escalate to this degree?
Yeah. I, again, I think the reason why we didn't have an earlier Discussion about this. It's just, it's complacency. I mean, in, in March of 2017, uh, we were rushing to get a, a, uh, a sort of conceptual foundation in place for a new U. S. policy toward China because Xi Jinping, as you might remember, was visiting Mar a Lago on the first week of April.
So we convened the principals committee of the National [00:19:00] Security Council and I read an excerpt of the Obama administration's policy toward China And observed that we were about to affect the most significant shift in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and that's because the Obama administration's policy and actually the policies of previous administrations going even back to George HW Bush when in the post Cold War period were based on the fundamental assumption that China After being being welcomed into the international community economically diplomatically And um and so forth, uh would play by the rules and as china prospered That it would liberalize its economy and liberalize its form of governance It was by 2017 clear that that was not the case.
It was clear based on chinese actions and behaviors And, and, uh, and that required us to, to, to take an approach and the shift that we took is toward transparent competition. And uh, and so I think that, you know, the reason we, we didn't do that sooner is because we clung to that fundamentally flawed assumption [00:20:00] for, you know, for far, far too long.
And I think for those, you know, who would say, Hey, isn't this dangerous, this consensus? No, I think it's just way over. I'll tell you that was, that was, it was not the consensus of 2017, dad. I'll tell you when we, when we rolled out the policy and we talked about the. The policy, there was tremendous amount of pushback from those who continue to cling to that fundamental, fundamentally flawed assumption.
And then I think what China's done is China's really helped, helped create the consensus themselves. I mean, if you want to thank anybody for the consensus on China, thank Xi Jinping. You know, I kind of want to send them. Flowers and chocolates, man. Say thanks for helping everybody realize, you know, that this is a real problem because they look at their behavior.
I mean, just, just since COVID, how about foisting COVID on the world? How about going after anybody who tried to ring the alarm bells, uh, persecuting journalists and, and, uh, and doctors who were trying to do so subverting the world health organization in the midst of the pandemic, adding insult injury with this wolf warrior diplomacy, massive cyber [00:21:00] attacks on our pharmaceutical companies and medical research.
Uh, activities during the, during the pandemic. Uh, how about, you know, how about economic coercion during the pandemic toward Australia and said, Hey, I think we have to try to figure out where this virus came from. It was, they punished, they punished Australia, uh, economically same treatment for Estonia. I mean, look at what they did in the South China Sea, rammed and sunk vehicles during this, I mean, uh, vessels during this period of time, bludgeoning, Indian sores to death on the front tier.
Okay. I mean, what more do you need? You know, in terms of evidence, we haven't even talked about the course of. Uh, the coercion toward, uh, toward Taiwan or, uh, or the, or the threatening sort of, uh, you know, military actions, uh, In the ska around Japan and Northeast Asia. I mean, the list just goes on and on, you know?
And so how about like, enabling the Russians as they have been, uh, in Ukraine? Uh, you know, the, the, the strategic partnership with Iran, you know, you know, joint, uh, naval exercises with the Iranians of the Russians. I mean, you know, I mean, [00:22:00] let's wake up to, let's wake up to this Dan, you know, and recognize that we should stop underwriting our own demise.
Uh, with financial and economic, uh, relationships that strengthen the people's liberation army, uh, that helped them perpetuate or perpetrate a campaign of slow genocide against the Uyghurs and stifle human freedom, uh, or, uh, employ their, their, their statist, you know, mercantilist economic model against us in a way that fundamentally disadvantages our businesses.
So we, yeah, I. I'm not afraid of the consensus. I think it's just long overdue. So, uh, yeah, so what you're basically saying is there was not a consensus before and we've worked through these issues and the threat has become so glaring that it's not like suddenly people, the American public has expressed through its representatives in Washington are on a war footing.
It's that it's a delayed reaction after a lot of kind of walking around willfully blindfolded, um, [00:23:00] or blindfolding ourselves. Uh, and, and hoping that, that, that this threat, you know, wasn't, wasn't real. And now we realize it's real and to your point, long overdue. And some people are struggling still. I mean, if, if you look at Chatted Yellow's recent speech on China, I mean, it is, it is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance textbook.
And uh, and so I, I think there are still some people who, you know, are disappointed and they should be disappointed. But I think that many people are still reluctant to wake up to the new reality that we have to compete. Uh, our, uh, mutual friend Hal Brands co authored a book with, uh, Michael Beckley called The Danger Zone, uh, about what he regards as the coming hot war with China.
And You know, he kind of lays out that this is not a far, like a long, you know, this is not long, far out in the horizon. This is, this is happening soon, potentially really soon. So, [00:24:00] can you, can you just summarize his take? Do you agree with it? Like, what does it look like? Are we, are we actually looking at a U.
S. China flare up in the, as a 2025 event, a 2026 event? Yes, we are. And, and I think the reason we are Uh, we'll be, are because of the aspirations and the fears of the Chinese communist party. And, and I think there's, there's two misunderstandings we have to correct, you know, about the nature of the competition.
What is, is a tendency to kind of just blame us, you know, because, uh, we're trying to keep China down or, or to say that this competition is really just part of the, you know, the, the, uh, Thucydides trap, you know, and a natural sort of confrontation between a rising power and a status quo power. But I think you have to get, look, look squarely at the Chinese communist party's actions.
But also read their words. I mean one of the the great the great scholar of of communist china frank decoder I highly recommend his you know, his uh, his uh, his five volumes [00:25:00] now on the on the party Um, you know, he said that people tend to to when they look at china to treat secondary sources as primary And primary sources as secondary, but if you look at what xi jinping's saying, you know, he's preparing the chinese people for war He was talking about the need to make sacrifices.
He's he's talking about the situation today And and uh and portraying it as analogous to mao's decision to enter to intervene in korea Right and which which they call the war of american aggression and he calls it a preemptive Blow that mao delivered to prevent another hundred blows. And so as the chinese Uh, economy struggles, you know, as, uh, as the party, you know, uh, fails, uh, because of its own decisions, the frailties in the economy, uh, based on it's their, their, their race to surpass us, the, uh, you know, the, the, the focus on economic growth to a fault where they've incurred so much debt, you see this playing out in the real estate sector.
I think we're going to see is who are they going to [00:26:00] blame? They're going to blame us, right? And that's going to lead to, I think, uh, increase in jingoistic nationalist rhetoric. And it's going to lead to, I think, potentially more aggression oriented on Taiwan or in the South China sea. And I think Xi Jinping thinks he has, he has maybe only a fleeting window of opportunity to act, you know, to act before maybe China grows old before it can grow rich.
You know, maybe act before, uh, Taiwan strengthens its defenses further. And we have some big events coming up. The Taiwanese election in February, for example, a U S election in 2024. And I think. I think the danger is if they portray weakness, which leads to kind of the second misunderstanding, you know, that, that what we do to compete might be seen as provocative, you know, you know, it's provocative weakness is provocative.
I mean, if you look at the, at the, at the, uh, at Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine, it followed the disastrous surrender to a terrorist organization. And withdrawal from Afghanistan and Putin looked at us, Xi [00:27:00] Jinping looked at us, us being the West, the United States in particular thought, hey, they've got nothing, you know, in fact, they said as much in, in, uh, in Beijing, just prior to the Olympics and just prior to the re invasion of Ukraine, they said, they said, basically you're over United States, you're over, uh, in the West, this is the new era of international relations, get used to us being in charge.
So I think we have to really recognize that, you know, Captain Reagan was right, you know, peace through strength, and, and, uh, and not that we want to be, you know, beating our chests about it or anything, but we need to just demonstrate real military capabilities, and we have to demonstrate real resolve to compete economically in the bolster supply chains and, uh, Ensure that we don't trade energy dependency that we had like in the Middle East in 1970s for, for an energy dependency on China associated with hardware and equipment, uh, that necessary for, for the transition to renewable energy sources, you know, I'm talking about solar panels and wind turbines and the upstream components and the rare earths associated with [00:28:00] Those are battery manufacturing.
We need to really do quite a bit Dan, you know, and we're already behind Frank Dakota the book the one volume I I I know is the and read parts of is the I would say devour but my Uh, my friend John who knows says whenever time I he I say i've devoured a book He doesn't believe me because he doesn't think I could devour that many books So it's true.
Sometimes I dip in and out of books and that The Dakota book on famine, it's one of them, but it's a multi volume. You're saying he's got many volumes. How's great famine is that's when there's one on, uh, the one on the great leap forward, right? Right. Then he, then what he did is that was the first one he wrote.
Then he, then he wrote the, the sequel to that, uh, which was on, on the, uh, the coastal revolution. Then he wrote the prequel to both of those, which is the history of the party. Uh, going all the way up to the 48, 49, uh, really up to the, up to the, the great week forward. And then the last volume is, [00:29:00] is, uh, is the party sys mal, you know, and.
Yeah, we'll put them all, we'll put them all in the show notes. He's, yeah, he's a force of nature. Uh, if, if China tries to take Taiwan militarily, do you think there's any way the U. S. does not get involved? Is there a world in which we don't get involved and doesn't China know that? Well, yeah, we will be involved, right?
Right. I mean, just look at, at, uh, at microprocessors, semiconductors. You know, I mean, the world goes into global depression. I mean, that's what happens, uh, if that supply chain is disrupted. Now we're in a race to try to bolster that supply chain, obviously with factories everywhere from, you know, South Korea to, to Japan, to, you know, to Ohio, to Texas, to, to New York and so forth.
But, but, uh, but, you know, that's going to take five, five years, you know, as a, as a conservative estimate. So I, I think, uh, I, the world would be involved. For [00:30:00] sure anyway, you know, and and I you know, there's a big debate now again I don't really know what to do about this, you know about the the strategic ambiguity policy and whether or not We should remove strategic ambiguity, which means that that we don't explicitly Uh enter into a defensive alliance with taiwan and it's not clear whether we're going to be Where we intervene or not and the idea with strategic ambiguity was that that would be sufficient to deter the chinese communist party but also It would, it would, it would provide impetus, you know, for, uh, for the Taiwanese to provide for their own defense.
Um, but you know, president Biden's kind of almost almost removed it. You know, he said, you know, he's known for making misstatements of course, but if this is a misstatement, he's made that misstatement three or four times, right, and, and pretty clearly. So, so I think that commitment seems to have been made.
Now, what does that mean in reality? What happens if there's a soft or a hard blockade of Taiwan? How do we respond? You know, I think we do respond. You know, I think we. And we have tremendous capabilities, Dan. You know, [00:31:00] I think there has been, uh, obviously a recognition based on the war in Ukraine that we've been under investing in some key sectors of, of our defense, uh, innovation base and industrial base.
Uh, and we've, we've got to really work hard, you know, to, to improve our capacity, to bolster supply chains, to, for, to, uh, to manufacture munitions and to. You know, address the bow wave of deferred military modernization to address the bow wave of, of, of already purchased weapons, uh, 19 billion worth to Taiwan.
So there's a lot, a lot of work to do, but you know, invading, yeah, Taiwan would be kind of a tough thing, you know, and, and if you look at just the U S subsurface capability, our submarine capability, I think the people's of reassuring would be, would be, you know, they, it'd be a rude awakening for them, uh, that, that is analogous to the rude awakening that the Russians have with the reinvasion of Ukraine.
You know, Taiwan is a, it is an Island the size of Maryland. It's, it's, it's [00:32:00] mountainous in the West. It's densely populated in massive urban areas in the East. There are only a couple of good landing places. There are only a couple of months when the, when the seas are, are amenable, you know, to, uh, to a cross straight invasion, it's about 150 miles across.
Now there, I mean, there are other things they could do with the islands that are, you know, just a couple of miles away and so forth, but if they're looking at a full, you know, invasion and subjugation. Uh, of Taiwan, you know, it's not clear to me that they could pull it off, that the People's Liberation Army could pull it off.
Can you tell us, and then I want to move to a couple quick other topics, but can you tell us where you see the current Russia Ukraine war, where it's heading, uh, over the next few months, particularly as we head deep into the summer? Well, I, I think it's, it's important to assess the, the relative strength of Russia and Ukraine based on capability and capacity, you know, [00:33:00] how, how effective their military forces can be in terms of, of, uh, of operating with combined arms and joint capabilities and a sufficient scale and for ample duration to accomplish the war aims, but then also to look at the will factor, the will within the fighting forces, but also the will of their national leadership and those who are support that national leadership.
So let's look at capability. Hey, the russian military is spent conventionally. I mean their army for sure is spent conventionally not all their Joint capabilities certainly not their nuclear forces or their air forces and not all the naval forces and so forth But but their army, I think dan must be at the break of moral collapse You see that with some of the the hodgepodge forces the wager wager group forces some of their paratroop forces and these, you know Uh these dinesh republic militias around bakmu that are just Uh, that they're just suffering unsustainable casualties.
And if you look at the overall casualties, they'd suffered, you [00:34:00] know, you know, the, the, the, the term decimation comes from the idea that when a force is decimated, it takes one 10th losses that it loses its combat effectiveness. You know, they're more than decimated. They can't, they can't regenerate the, the, uh, the combat capabilities, uh, that, that, that they've lost.
Uh, and, and, uh, and so they, so they can't win commission, but what they've done is they've developed, you know, very, uh, extensive defenses. And the question is, okay, now on the Ukrainian side, uh, they're, they have the will, have they been able to disengage enough forces and train them adequately and provide them with the range of capabilities they need for a sustained offensive?
You know, and we're going to see that pretty soon. And, and I, I believe that if they can penetrate those defenses and turn the Russians out of the defenses along the coast and the sea of Ozoff and the black sea, uh, then that you create becomes economically viable again, and the Ukrainian armed forces can place Russian, uh, [00:35:00] uh, uh, you know, logistics facilities and bases in Crimea, the position where they're no longer tenable.
You starting to see that now with some of the Ukrainian long range strikes. Uh, against depots, against aircraft, I mean they, the Ukrainians shot down two aircraft over Russian territory in the last week, and so these strikes in depth are, are meant to prepare for the offensive, but once the offensive starts, you know, that's when you have to combine mobile protected firepower, protected mobility, skilled infantry, fires, aviation capabilities, electromagnetic warfare, Along with engineering.
Okay, you're going to see combat engineering being decisive here You don't have to make river crossings, which the russians have failed to do and the ukrainians have not yet attempted Uh a a river crossing under in contact with an enemy multiple obstacle crossings I mean, hey, this is not an easy military problem to to to conduct a sustained offensive against prepared defenses So yeah, I I don't know dan.
I I my my gut [00:36:00] tells me the ukrainians can do it Because of the paucity of Russian will and the degree to which they'd suffered unsustainable levels of casualties. And, um, and so, you know, the time is now to give the Ukrainians everything we can. I mean, I was so glad to see the United Kingdom, you know, uh, provide some of these long range missile capabilities.
You know, it's important to defend the Ukrainians from these onslaughts that we've seen over the past week of. Massive missile strikes. I mean, to, to, you know, to, to defend against these missiles, you have to be able to shoot down the arrows, but you also have to be able to kill the archer, you know, and, and so they need these long range capabilities for defensive purposes, as well as, uh, to, to disrupt the enemy's command and control and their fires capabilities in depth as they initiate this offensive, there's a lot, uh, HR on the UK.
Take on Russia, Ukraine and the military, military role in your recent episode of battlegrounds, your podcast with general Nick Carter, uh, from, [00:37:00] um, from the UK military that I highly recommend. I wanted just before we run out of time, I want to jump to a few of our questions we said you were going to be on.
We got a ton of them. We can't get to all of them, but there's a huge HR fan base out there, so I'm just going to try to rattle off a couple of these. Here we go.
This is Corey Gruber from Virginia. General McMasters, why is there a near wholesale lack of accountability for senior military leaders? Have they been batting a thousand for the last two decades?
It's like right out of, uh, Dereliction of Duty, your book. So what's your response? Yeah, well, of course, military leaders should be held accountable, responsible, you know, for, uh, for military operations and efforts. But it, you know, as Sir Michael Howard, the great historian has said, and I don't want to make excuses for anybody, but, you know, he said That he said most often, you know, the causes of victory and defeat are found far from the battlefield.
And I would say that in our most recent frustrations in Iraq, but especially in [00:38:00] Afghanistan, those frustrations were caused, I think, by fundamentally flawed and inconsistent policies and strategies that were created in Washington. You know, the, the war in Afghanistan, you know, which is heartbreaking for me, it was not a 20 year war.
It was a one year war fought 20 times over. And, uh, and I described this in, in, you know, the, the, uh, the inconsistency and the, and the fundamentally flawed nature of those strategies in, in, in the book battlegrounds, if everybody's interested in more on it, and then, and then, uh, not, not, not to take anything away from this awesome podcast, but, but I, I vent, I, I vented on Afghanistan, uh, with Barry Weiss, who asked us this question.
Uh, to me on her honestly podcast, uh, right after the disastrous, uh, retreat, you know, I, I, I think, uh, from as long as the, to call it from Afghanistan, uh, in, in August, September of, of, uh, you know, of 2021. So, um, I, I am, uh, you know, I, I'm sympathetic to your question, [00:39:00] but, you know, ultimately as I wrote in dereliction of duty, you know, a president can get the military advice, you know, he or she wants based on.
The way they structure that, that relationship. And I think it's quite clear that across both the Trump and the, and the Biden ministrations, those two presidents prioritized withdraw. Over the achievement of any kind of worthwhile outcome. I consistent with our interest in Afghanistan. All right I'm going to I mean it is amazing you think about it from the read from the perspective of many parts of the world It's particularly the Middle East that they've had multiple administrations from different parties focused on some kind of Withdrawal from from the region.
Um, and how could they think talk about a bipartisan consensus? Uh, here's another question for you
A military question for mr. McMaster. The west has been trying to stop the iranian nuclear program for decades At this late date. Does iran have any nuclear infrastructure that could be hit successfully [00:40:00] by a military strike? I would think that after all this time the iranians have all of its nuclear sites buried so deep Or hardened to such an extent that any military effort by the U.
S. or Israel would have very little impact. In other words, is the threat of military action an empty one? My name is Joseph. Thank you for your answer.
I think it's important to recognize that any kind of a strike, a single strike, Uh, would probably be inadequate, that there would have to be a sustained campaign to block Iran's path, uh, toward a nuclear weapon that could threaten Israel with destruction. Uh, I, I believe that it's going to happen. I mean, if, if, if Iran doesn't, uh, enter into some kind of agreement that provides a high degree of transparency and, and, uh, very rigorous, you know, verification mechanisms, um, and inspection regime, uh, that I think, you know, the, the begging doctrine is alive and well in Israel, kind of across the political spectrum.[00:41:00]
So this is something to think about and to, and to consider how something like this would happen, a strike and a series of strikes and really a sustained campaign to block Iran's path to the most destructive weapons on earth. I think would have to include, you know, a range of, of, of capabilities that would have to be disrupted.
You have not only nuclear facilities, but those involved with the program that have knowledge or. Or where that knowledge base is stored. Of course, it's tied to the to Iran's missile program, you know as well These aren't the only weapons of mass destruction either. Uh that uh that to be clear. It's not just just for our listeners It's not just about their nuclear capability It's about their ability to to take that nuclear capability and deliver it in the form of a weapon Which is dependent on their missile development program, right?
And to threaten Israel with destruction, right? And and of course what they're doing is trying to trying to trying to deter Uh israel through these capabilities, but also through their proxy forces Uh in southern lebanon and gaza and now in syria I mean, they've been trying to place a proxy [00:42:00] army on the border of israel and syria And so it's it's tied the effort to block their path to a nuclear weapon is also tied to addressing iran's You know four decade plus long proxy war they've been waging against, you know, the united states israel and their arab neighbors So I think what you really need is a comprehensive approach That caught perhaps the approach to the threats that Iran poses to international security.
And, and we should be working together with partners and allies in the region. But of course, our idiotic policies towards the Middle East, I think have set us back quite a bit, uh, with some of our, our Arab partners and allies. And we have to really, I think, work hard. Uh, to regain boss grout in those relationships.
Uh, alright, we will leave it there, H. R. Thanks for doing this. I said at the beginning we would talk about their election of duty. Well, we really didn't get into it. That one of those questions, um, teed it up. And I will put that book in the show notes. I highly recommend it. It is a [00:43:00] book I actually devoured, John.
Uh, and, uh, and, uh, it's really about military, uh, you know, what led to decision making in the Vietnam War. And, um, anyways, it's, it's, it's like one of the three or four books I recommend to people interested in foreign policy and decision making, uh, in the U. S. Um, H. R., we're gonna have to have you back because we had a lot of questions that we didn't get to.
Uh, but sadly, given the state of affairs in the world, they will all be relevant. Uh, they will continue to be relevant those questions. So we'll just put them, uh, in our inventory system and we will repurpose them when you are next on. That is a way of me securing an early commitment to have you back until then.
Uh, thanks for coming on. Hey, Dan, great to be with you. And you know, when I made the transition, you know, from uniform Silicon Valley, I reread startup nation again. Uh, and, uh, and so I just want to thank you for. For that book, it helped me understand Israel better. I went to the museum of innovation when I visited Tel Aviv, you know, and, uh, and your book was just a [00:44:00] great primer for my, my last visit to Israel, as well as a primer for my.
Uh, understanding kind of the, the importance of, of an innovation ecosystem like we have here in Silicon Valley as well. Thank you. Uh, and the reason he's saying here in Silicon Valley is because we're recording this. He's sitting at his office at the Hoover Institute in, uh, Stanford University in case anyone is mentioning.
I'm looking at you, HR. You got like a fantastic view, which is reason to stay there. Metacruz mountains out those windows and South Bay out the other. I'm in that. Literal ivory tower here at the Hoover Tower. A little better than Fallujah. All right. Take care. Thanks for that. Thanks for the plug for Startup Nation.
I'll talk to you soon, my friend.
That's our show for today. To keep up with H. R. McMaster, you can track him down at the Hoover Institution. That's hoover. org. You can also find him at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. We'll post his books and his podcasts in the show notes. We had one technical hiccup when we [00:45:00] recorded this episode, choppy wifi at Stanford.
I guess they're not paying their phone bills. So we're able to get to all the questions. A couple of the questions that you would send in, uh, fell off. We only were able to get to one of them, but when we have Tyler on, we will be sure to make up for it and get to more of your questions. So please send them in to Dan at unlocked.
fm. Just keep it to under 30 seconds, record it and send it in. And some of the questions you all sent in for HR are readily usable for future guests, whether it's HR or anyone else on geopolitics. So we'll figure out a way to play a couple of questions for future guests, because sadly those questions and the issues raised in them are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.