What's with Republicans & Ukraine? - with Aaron MacLean

Why is U.S. assistance for Ukraine being held up in Congress? What is at stake for the U.S.?

Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Previously, he was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor and Legislative Director to U.S. Senator Tom Cotton. Aaron served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer. Following his time in the operating forces, he was assigned to the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy. He received an M.Phil. (Dist.) in medieval Arabic thought from the University of Oxford.

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Transcript

DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.

[00:00:00] The

Biden administration and Congress, or at least some in Congress, are trying to send additional military resources to Ukraine to assist in its defensive war with Russia. But the funding is being held up as Congress sorts out its overall funding of the U. S. government. Now, the source of the holdup is a, as I said, a subset of Republican members of the House.

The last time there was funding before Congress for Ukraine, 71 Republican House members voted against it. Let's assume that's the floor, and the number's only gonna go up from there. That is actually what Speaker McCarthy is trying to contend with as he cobbles together the votes for Ukraine military funding.

It will get taken care of in the Senate and then come back to the House. But no matter how it gets sliced and [00:01:00] diced, there is this growing resistance. to support for Ukraine from Republican elected officials. Why? What's going on here? Well, one piece that I was particularly interested in recently published by Fox News attempted to speak directly to Republican members of Congress on this issue.

It was co authored by Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and director of the CIA and the Trump administration. And a member of Congress who was a real leader on national security issues from the state of Kansas. And Aaron McLean. Aaron is our guest today. I wanted to check in with Aaron. Because not only has he been on the front lines of policy making in Washington, he's been on the front lines of military action.

We'll talk about that in a moment. And he's also a student of history, of military history, of U. S. foreign policy history. And he has very close ties to Republican thinking on Capitol Hill. A little bit on Aaron's background. He's a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. [00:02:00] Previously he was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor and Legislative Director to Senator Tom Cotton, who as listeners to this podcast know, Tom Cotton has been on this podcast several times.

Aaron also served on active duty as a U. S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer. That was in the 2009 2010 period. Following his time in the operating forces, Aaron was assigned to the faculty of the U. S. Naval Academy. And he also has a very impressive academic background that predates his time in the military, including studying at Oxford University.

He's also the host of a fantastic podcast called the School of War, which I highly recommend. If you're interested in military history, you will love this podcast. Aaron has a unique angle in terms of how he structures every one of these podcast episodes. You will learn a lot about different periods in military history.

And in fact, we talk about his podcast in this conversation. And we also talk about the future of [00:03:00] warfare, which has been the subject of a couple of his recent episodes. And before we move to the conversation with Aaron, a couple of housekeeping notes. First, as you've probably noticed, we have been dropping Second episodes the last couple of weeks on Thursdays and over the next couple of Thursdays We will be hitting some interesting topics with interesting guests including the implications of the Republican presidential debate which takes place on Wednesday and Then we'll also be having a discussion about the Saudi Israel normalization deal, which is picking up steam I think it's moving along faster than people realize even faster than the news accounts Coming out of the, uh, U.

N. General Assembly meeting in New York, in which Saudi and Israeli leaders were saying positive things publicly about its prospects. And one piece of this nuclear deal is the nuclear component, which is controversial and will be the subject of a lot of debate at some point. And we're gonna unpack that and try to understand what that actually means [00:04:00] for Saudi Arabia, for Israel, for the Middle East.

and for the United States. So look out for those episodes. And finally, as you know from our previous couple of episodes, Saul Singer and I have our next book coming out in a few weeks, The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World, very relevant to this moment.

in Israeli history and in Israel's future, and we will be having some conversations about it in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, please pre order the book. Go to wherever you order your books. We care a lot about this book. If you care about Israel, I think you'll care about this book. And pre orders are a big help to us.

But now let's move on to the conversation with Aaron McLean. And the question I really want to get to with Aaron, which is, What's with Republicans and Ukraine? This is Call Me Back,[00:05:00]

and I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time. My longtime friend, Aaron McClain from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, uh, an alumnus of the office of U. S. Senator Tom Cotton, who's been a frequent guest on this podcast, and a Marine Corps veteran. Thanks for hopping on, Dan.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm a long time. Call me back fan. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. Well, we, uh, we, we wind up, uh, for a variety of reasons, speaking, uh, a lot throughout any given week. So it's good to, those are offline conversations. So it's good to expose our listeners to one of those conversations as we, as we flip this one online.

Um, so, and there's a lot I want to get in into with you and I want to start, we're going to talk about your. Your origin story and the school of war podcast, which I'm a, um, I'm a big fan of, and we're going to talk about your own, [00:06:00] you know, experience in the military, uh, in a moment. But before we do, I want to start with this piece you coauthored with, uh, former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo about, uh, The Russian war in Ukraine and why as much as it may pain Republican members of Congress to do anything to help the Biden administration, uh, this is, this is a particular issue where to quote Arthur Vandenberg politics should stop at the water's edge and, uh, and we Republicans have a real stake in this and I, I guess So I wanna, I wanna start with your piece, but even before we start with your, with your op ed, where are we, so, uh, this episode is, is posting the week of September 26th, so the week of September 26th, where are we with regard to the debate over funding?

For the war in Ukraine. Uh, well, there's a short term and a long term answer to that. The short term answer is, you know, the white house has requested [00:07:00] supplemental funds, 20 some billion dollars on top of the a hundred plus billion that we have already provided in support to the Ukrainian war effort. And it's a live, it's a live issue.

It's live ball. So, um, uh, right now it looks, uh, your guest and as to the broader politics of this is as good as mine, but it looks as though the House is not going to voluntarily pass this. So the question is, will it come back to the House from the Senate in some form? Will we have a shutdown like it's tied up in this broader network of questions about whether or not, you know, the Congress can actually fund the government here in the weeks to come.

And it is not a priority of. House Republicans, it seems to get it across the line, even though there are plenty of House Republican votes ultimately for aid for Ukraine. If you just made it a pure up or down question. So it's, it's, it's, it'll probably get done is, is the, the, the law, the short answer to the question, but the mechanism and timing of how it gets done in the weeks and months to come, it's a little unclear.

So just for our listeners, the, the. [00:08:00] It appears that, as Aaron is saying, the funding will not pass as part of any kind of house package, continuing resolution, um, spending bill. Uh, the House will avoid it. The last time there was funding, uh, up in the House, only 70, I think, something like 71 Republicans voted against.

funding. So the 221 Republicans between the remaining Republicans and obviously the Democrats, there were enough votes to pass it. If you assume that all those 71 are guaranteed to vote again, this time, sorry, vote against it this time. And that's probably a floor. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot more that, um, that joined the no ranks.

Uh, it starts to get a little dicey, which is why McCarthy in order to cobbled, cobbled together, the votes really, really, really will have to depend on, uh, democratic votes, which is why. He's happy to let the Senate pass it, and McConnell and the Senate Republicans seem very strong, uh, on supporting, uh, [00:09:00] the funding for Ukraine, so just let the Senate Republicans pass it, and then it comes back to the House, and hopefully McCarthy can, McCarthy can pass it that way, but I will tell you, I, I've been struck, Aaron.

I spoke with a House Republican who's a leader, I won't mention his name, who's a leader on foreign policy and national security issues last week. And he's someone who's been rock solid on Ukraine, very supportive of the administration, uh, of every funding request that's been made. And for the first time he's saying, using language like blank check.

You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sign the blank check and, um, and he'll probably still be for it in the end, but his language is getting tougher and he's in a very, very red district, so he always wears a primary challenge from the right. And so you just start to see the pressure on these guys growing and you and.

Secretary Pompeo make the point in your piece that the criticism from some on the hard right that are making if you want to call it the hard right. I don't even know what to call it. So like the isolationist, right? It's not necessarily like [00:10:00] how we think traditionally of the right, but whatever you want to call that segment of the of the electorate in our party that's growing their argument is that Biden and the Biden administration has been doing too much.

It's been too interventionist. It's been too muscular and And you're, you guys, you and Pompeo in the first part of your op ed layout all how, how actually it's been the opposite of your frustration with Biden. Is, is that he's been too involved? It's actually been the exact opposite. We should be encouraging him to do more.

Yeah, no. So credit where it's due, uh, in terms of what Ukraine critics on the right are saying, um, there's a lot to be skeptical about and a lot to be critical of in the Biden administration's handling of the war. Though, uh, I of course agree exactly with what you just pointed out that we're coming at it, the right is coming at it from the wrong direction.

Uh, prior to Putin. Um, reinvading Ukraine, uh, in February of 2022, the Biden administration was engaged in a, you know, multi stage process of [00:11:00] appeasement, essentially of Vladimir Putin, which is a time honored Washington tradition. Um, uh, certainly a democratic party tradition stretching back. Uh, you know, into the Obama administration, if you recall the, uh, the reset button and all of that.

I mean, we were just trying the same thing again, and this came up in issue after issue, whether it was the Nord Stream pipeline, um, whether it was arms control negotiations with the Russians. Um, and then on Ukraine itself, excuse me, which if you recall. Um, in the actual lead up to the fight, uh, the Biden administration was bending over backwards, essentially, to find some way to accommodate Putin rather than find ways in which to effectively deter him.

Uh, and there was this, I mean, one moment kind of serves as an illustration of. Uh, of, of, of the spirit of the times when Biden sort of musing to the press comments that, you know, look, if there is some sort of minor incursion, I'm, I'm paraphrasing here, but this is in fact the spirit of what he said.

There's some sort of minor incursion of Russia into Ukraine. You know, that's the kind of thing that we could, um, [00:12:00] you know, we could deal with, um, uh, and sort of language like that. Um, uh, to, to someone like Putin communicates profound unseriousness. Um, and he did not take, um, uh, the West seriously. He did not take Joe Biden seriously to, to, um, very dangerously.

He did not take the Ukrainian seriously in the Ukrainian capacity for self defense seriously either. And so he, he invaded. And so, look, I get it. I get why, you know, I think if we had, let's, we can imagine an alternative universe where we have a Republican president who did things that we. Like on the deterrence front, and if the war started handled the war in a way that gives us confidence and made public statements explaining his strategy or her strategy and, um, uh, and sort of led the country, we probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in bleeding Republican votes.

For support, at least not as many Republican votes. So the Biden administration's handling of it is absolutely the kind of proximate cause of some of the trouble that we are in. And on some level, I'm sympathetic to it, even though [00:13:00] again, I think the actual analysis of the situation is that Biden has been too weak, not too strong.

I fear I should add. I mean, That's the proximate and superficial cause of our problems. I do worry that our problems are deeper than that. I worry that we have Emerging problems about the republican party's commitment to the security of europe, um and to internationalism more broadly Um, uh that come from deeper places and from older places in the party And do you and do you if we had a republican president who?

Were out there Making the case for our involvement, or at least not our direct involvement, but our support of the Ukrainian, uh, war effort. Do you think that would change it? I mean, in other words, you know, during obviously the Bush years, you had a Republican president who's very committed to engagement.

In global affairs, you, you know, during the Reagan and and first Bush administration, meaning George H. W. Bush, you had Republican presidents who are willing to make the case [00:14:00] publicly for engagement and Republicans rallied. And do you think this is, if you had a Republican president, if you had a President Haley or DeSantis or Scott or, you know, whomever out there making the case, um, That this is just like Republican voters are just responding to.

They don't want to do anything to help Biden, Biden. They find the least inspiring political figure and leader they could possibly imagine. So there's nothing he could be for that we could be for, they would say. Yeah. I mean, look, it would be a lot better that we would not be kind of getting to the. Um, the crisis level of, of vote loss that we have at this point.

Um, but, but again, I do think there, there are deeper and, and, and more troublesome things going on here. And it is the case that when you go out, you know, I, I'm sympathetic to these members. They go back to their districts, um, uh, especially the red districts, right? Um, and it is not, it is not a happy subject to discuss, um, uh, support for Ukraine for all sorts of reasons.

Um, and look, I mean. I think for me, the thing that is hard to grapple with is I was born [00:15:00] in 1981, right? So, you know, Ronald Reagan, my God, you're literally, honestly, Aaron, I've never thought, I've never heard you say that you are 10, literally 10 years. Let's see if our perspectives differ here. Cause I'm, I'm curious to know what the, what difference those 10 years may, because for me, um, You know, my, my formative memories, political memories are of Ronald Reagan and then, you know, George H.

W. Bush, the end of the Cold War, the Cold War that the Republican Party wins with its particular sort of mix of, uh, of, of, of Internationalist, um, policies. Um, and then we have the nineties, which we'll fast forward through quickly here in my account. And then you have 9 11 and you have George W. Bush in the war on terror.

And so all of which is to say that for me, the Republican Party is the party of. American leadership abroad. It is broadly speaking, and I realize these are all extremely crude generalizations, but it is, it is the party that generally speaking [00:16:00] is more comfortable with the use of military force. In my lived experience, it was the Democratic Party that was skeptical of the military, skeptical of military budgets, skeptical of what American hard power could achieve abroad.

And so it is disorienting for Meej For me to have to have been born at the moment I was born and to grow up through the world that I grew up through to suddenly confront the fact that actually none of these things that I thought were just like woven into the structure of America's political universe.

Like this is just how it is. That actually, that's not true. Um, that. Um, the longer tradition of the American right, I'm about to make a series of very pessimistic statements actually, um, is one in which actually, um, skepticism of internationalism, even kinds of varieties of isolationism, um, is, is actually the dominant trend.

Yeah, the dominant trend. And how, how can that be? Well, you know, my theory is that, so that basically you, you're basically arguing that these years that, that you and I, and I like to say you and I came of age during, because it [00:17:00] implies that I'm younger, at least in spirit than I am in years. But, but I, but the timeline you focused on is spot on.

I mean, that is so, so just, just to insert here, so I, I was 10 years old. I, I'm amazed that at age 10 or 11 or 12, you were following the end of the Cold War, but I admire it. Uh, but I, um, I was. I was 10 years older than you, but following it obviously very closely and Reagan is who made me a Republican. I mean, that's how I became a conservative and it was largely, by the way, on foreign policy issues.

My, my, you know, the, the, the story of the Holocaust, the Shoah is, is obviously a big foundational, sadly, tragically, uh, story of our family history. And when I start to study the history and became more tuned into the history. I realized that the, that the, uh, the, the, the party or government or person responsible for the greatest number of atrocities in the 20th century was Adolf Hitler, second only to the communists and the The sense that [00:18:00] Reagan and the Reagan administration, that was, that was a big part of what infused the Reagan commitment to human rights and to the cold war and to the Reagan doctrine.

And that was, that was, that was partly how I became a conservative, but we, and, and, you know, and it's Reagan. And it's Thatcher. And obviously it's George H. W. Bush, which you and I probably disagree with. Some of the things George H. W. Bush was, uh, was for, but on balance was an extension of that tradition.

And I think what you're saying is, on the one hand, that, that kind of, those were formative, that was a formative period for people like you and me on our thinking. But But you're saying for the right was actually an outlier. Yeah, an aberration. That's my fear. That's my fear. And, and stepping back and looking at the long history, uh, of the right through the 20th century, I fear there's like plenty of evidence for it.

It's very significant, by the way, you point out the connections between the period in which we grew up, I'm being very generous, the period in which we grew up, uh, and II generation who, who folks who had served as relatively young [00:19:00] people in the second world war were running the show. When we were sort of first figuring things out for ourselves, I think that was very important.

Um, and I think the fact that the World War II generation has disappeared almost to a man at this point. We have the last few folks hanging around is also part of our problem. But that, yeah, that's my, that's my point. That a series of exogenous shocks essentially has kept the American right or kept the American right largely internationalist through the middle and second half of the 20th century.

I mean, going back to Pearl Harbor, which kills the original America first movement, though there's actually, if you look at the days immediately following Pearl Harbor, very interestingly and relevantly to our There is a, a multi day period where you have voices, uh, in the Republican Party arguing that, okay, okay, obviously we need to fight Japan now, but we can keep out of Europe, we can still stay out of Europe.

And it's Hitler's declaration of war on the United States a few days after Pearl Harbor that, that finally puts that to bed. Um, but you have, you have World War II. Meaning left to [00:20:00] their own devices. The right, even after Pearl Harbor, we're ready to still steer clear of Europe. Some. Yeah, for sure. Wow.

Absolutely. Um, uh, and then, you know, you have the Soviet union come to the fore, you have the blockade of Berlin, you have the invasion of Korea. So again, you have a couple of shocks helpfully with a left wing bad guy, right? In the form of the Soviet union that makes the Republican party stay responsible.

But even then in 1952, Robert Taft. The, uh, isolationist, um, leader of the Republicans in the Senate is almost the party's nominee. Um, Dwight Eisenhower runs for the nomination to deny Taft the nomination. So even there, there's like an element of contingency. Um, Eisenhower obviously becomes the president.

We go through the Cold War, we enter the period that you and I were discussing. And then in the nineties, I mean, I can remember, and I was, you know, to your, to your point, yes, Dan, I was a bit of a nerd. Uh, and I was, I mean, I grew up in the Washington area too. My parents were news junkies. And so, you know, we watched the McLaughlin group every weekend and stuff like that.

Um, this [00:21:00] is, this is a confession. My kids are suffering through Jets games and you were watching, you know, PBS. political talk shows. All right, go ahead. Yeah, this is, this is becoming a confessional, but I can, you know, I remember in the 90s, um, uh, you know, obviously you have Pat Buchanan, like these, these, these elements of the right never die.

They never actually go away, but they are very much the minority report on the right. But in the 90s, you know, you have Republican opposition to intervention in the former Yugoslavia. I remember that well, I remember my father. Um, who was a, who was of the World War II generation and a lifelong, well, at least in the part of his life that I, I came along a Republican.

Um, and, um, I remember him, you know, making sort of semi bitter comments along the lines of, you know, Aaron, these people have been killing each other for, for thousands of years. We need to kind of stay out of this kind of thing. Like, so it's, you know, in the 90s, you kind of saw a bit of a resurgence of it.

And then you have 9 11. The last exogenous shock. And now in Ukraine, you have, um, you know, a threat to [00:22:00] American security that is, um, you know, at a remove, you have to kind of explain the ways in which Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a threat to American security. Obviously, I believe that it is. Um, uh, and you have, you know, you don't have the Soviet Union.

You have, if anything, I mean, it's a crude use of the spectrum, but you have a right wing baddie in Vladimir Putin, not a left wing baddie. And so, you know, yeah. These, these forces that have been, um, not dormant, but, but again, the minority report in the party, they're, they're, they're, it's deep, it's all of us.

It's just deeper than discussed at Joe Biden. There's more going on. Okay. So Aaron, I want to, um, I want to just pivoting on something you just said, I want to quote from your piece, the piece that you and Secretary Pompeo wrote, you, you say here, and we'll post this piece in the show notes, but you, you wrote here a Russian victory.

A Russian victory would raise the chances of expanded war in Europe with Putin contemplating the seizure of more lost elements of the Russian empire, [00:23:00] whether in whatever is left of Ukraine or beyond. It would be taken as proof by the Chinese communists eyeing Taiwan that America is unserious, making a war in the Pacific more likely.

I wanna, I really wanna spell that out because to me this is the most catastrophic, jarring, reality, which is that if Putin were able to steamroll into Ukraine, which thank God he's not been able to, that of course, if he were met with little resistance, he would keep going. And when I, when I make that point, people sort of roll their eyes, either they don't believe it, or they don't seem to care.

People on the right. So first of all, can you, can you articulate Why you feel certain or relatively certain that Putin wouldn't stop at Ukraine if he were able to just move quickly Expeditiously through Ukraine for Vladimir Putin the collapse of the Soviet Union was the signal geopolitical catastrophe of his lifetime of the 20th Certainly a second half of the 20th century [00:24:00] and it is quite clear that he sees His project, uh, as on some level it's reconstitution, uh, now he knows that the most robust version of that, um, is probably not possible, but he has also demonstrated through his actions going back to at least 2008, um, in Georgia.

That he intends to make progress towards that goal. And if he can split NATO in the process, all the better. So, uh, he, you know, this is where you get into these interesting debates with these sort of international relations theorists, these, these quote unquote realists who want to blame the whole thing on NATO expansion, right?

That it's, it's, it's the West's expansion East, essentially, that has provoked Vladimir Putin into this. And while it's certainly the case That, um, you know, Vladimir Putin does not look on a, uh, you know, Western oriented Ukraine favorably from a security standpoint. Um, it is, again, it's, it's sort of coming from a deeper place [00:25:00] for him.

He has a vision of Russian nationalism that is tied up with Russian imperialism and with all these, I don't, you know. I don't know how deep you want to get into this stuff, but with all these sort of intellectual currents swirling around Russia over the course of the last generation, writings of this guy, Alexander Dugin, um, this concept of, of Eurasianism, um, the way in which Russia will lead a, a, a Eurasian movement Um, uh, that stands against the West, both in, in literal political terms, right?

There will be an imperial space that is non Western. Um, uh, but, but also in terms of its moral values will stand against the, you know, the degrading progressivism that Europe and the United States have come to, come to represent, which by the way, this, this starts to. Get us into problems right in our American political debate about these things because the right looks at a progressivism and doesn't really like what it sees and it sees an international enemy of progressivism.

And there are those in the right who think they're looking at a friend, um, but that's, that's his, that's his vision. I [00:26:00] think, look, I don't think it's that hard of a case to make to go back again to start in 2008 and point out, um, that the attitude here is expansionist and this is hard for people to accept.

It's hard for. For liberals to accept in particular, even though they seem to have finally come around, um, because, I mean, to quote John Kerry, you know, this is just not how we behave in the 21st century. You know, irredentist drives to reclaim, you know, lost territory. Like that's, that's 19th century behavior.

That's literally what he, um, what he said, right? Um, Well, you know, John Kerry doesn't get to say what is 19th or 21st century. It turns out you can do it in the 21st century just fine. And Putin is doing it. And I absolutely think, and again, I think the burden of proof is on, on those who, who would argue the contrary, um, that were Putin to have succeeded in a swift victory in Ukraine, or were he somehow now to bring about some sort of pause in the fighting, um, that was very, that was favorable to him, let's say that somehow Kiev fell or, or, or there was, there was some sort of.[00:27:00]

unambiguous positive Russian outcome that then gave him a few years to reconstitute himself, uh, and his forces. Yes. Um, he would, he would keep going. He would go into, he would possibly go into what's left of Ukraine. If he felt that he wanted to try his luck, the Baltics are always there. The Baltic States, the reality is he's strengthened NATO at least for now.

Right. Um, through, through all this. So he's, he's dealt himself a series of blows. Um, but, um, uh, you know, to use an old, to use an old saying, he's going to keep probing until he meets. So, you know, that argument about that, that NATO expansion, US policy, this is like basically John Mearsheimer argument. Uh, he gave this lecture at the University of Chicago before the most recent, uh, war, and he laid He laid out this argument.

I'm the number of people that have sent me that the YouTube video of that speech is and then I go look at the views on it and it's like it's [00:28:00] some crazy number. I mean, millions and millions, maybe even over 10 million views of this speech and he lays it out. And if you don't know much, it's quite persuasive.

Uh, and at some point I thought about having like our friend Fred Kagan or someone just come on the podcast and literally just break. Okay. Just break down Mearsheimer's speech because it is scary how how resonant it is with so many people not not only on in our party But just generally yeah, and what Mearsheimer can't can't get and he's just I by the way I just read is he has a brand new book out with this guy Sebastian Rosado Who's a student of his called how states think and I have I have read it for my sins, and I'm actually I'm writing a review of it right now Excellent, and he um he cannot Wrap his mind around the fact that domestic politics matters or that's I mean he can wrap his mind around it.

He simply rejects it So that everything we just discussed about Putin's worldview is to Mearsheimer completely irrelevant because the domestic [00:29:00] politics ideologies of states ideologies of leaders are essentially Uh, uh, meaningless when it comes to, uh, understanding state behavior. States simply are security seeking entities.

Um, in Mearsheimer's variety of realism, they tend to seek power in order to preserve their security. The fact that Vladimir Putin is, um, is like, uh, you know, possessed of these crazy neo imperial visions is neither here nor there. In Mearsheimer's view, a, a, you know, a liberal democracy in Moscow would be behaving the same way.

I, I, to me, that stretches credulity. Uh, I find that hard to accept, but you know, Mearsheimer is just at the level of international relations. He's I, I, I, I, I can't take him that seriously. Unfortunately, I should, I should add. He also, you know, he's been publishing these battlefield commentaries of what's going on in Ukraine.

He had this long sub stack essay a few weeks ago. basically about how he's been right all along and the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed and it was doomed to fail. I think that's actually the name [00:30:00] of the piece. Um, and you know, when you get into Mearsheimer's battlefield analysis, and I'm going to say something that our friend Fred Kagan would probably, if he were here, slap me for saying, you know, there's more, it's more defensible.

Mearsheimer's very pessimistic view of the battlefield in Ukraine is more defensible. And I do think it's hard sitting here. At the end of September, um, to paint a picture of the Ukrainian counter offensive's progress that is rosy. It has been slow going at best and the Russian defensive complex has been proven to be, um, quite effective.

Uh, and Mearsheimer is taking great pleasure in that, which is exasperating, but he's, he's not wrong. It's simply a fact. It's, it's, um, it's slow going. So on your School of War podcast, your most recent episode was with Mick Ryan, who is an Australian military officer. Is that right? That's right. Retired Australian general.

Okay. And he And you, the topic of the episode, which is excellent. We'll post it in the show notes as well. Highly recommend it [00:31:00] on it's called Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan, and future of Warby. You made a point early in the episode that basically we, so much of what we. Collectively, the West, uh, are hoping for is some change in politics in Moscow, and we saw, we saw that this would obviously, uh, you know, yield potentially enormous strategic benefit to us if, if things just got shaken up in the politics of the West.

Of russia rather than on the battlefield because obviously if there's a shake up in the politics of russia, then you can then you could have a Derivative of that a shake up on the battlefield. And so that's what we're hoping for And obviously the progosian mutiny that was ultimately suppressed but at the peak of the mutiny we thought oh my gosh This is the beginning of something and so and we were waiting to see how it'd shake out.

It seems to have been stabilized You also made the point that that putin And the Russian leadership are, are hoping for some political shakeup in Washington. [00:32:00] They're, they're, they're looking for the same strategic advantage, uh, with the politics being turned upside down somehow, uh, that would gain them some advantage on the battlefield, albeit indirectly.

And coming back to the beginning of our conversation, do you think they're looking at This discussion we're having now and the debate we're having now, and they're following people like Meir Scheimer and the following he has, and the debate over congressional funding in there, the Russian embassy congressional affairs office is going back to Moscow and saying, you know, the 71 house Republicans voted against funding last time.

We think it's going to be, you know, 111 this time, or, you know, and they're, they're analyzing all this and they're. As, as, as giddy and, and cautiously optimistic as we were at the peak of the Purgosian mutiny or like what we thought the implications of that would be, they're watching our politics play out right now over the funding debate and they're, they're just as giddy.

Yeah, absolutely. No, no, no, no question about it. I mean, giddy, giddy may, may slightly overstate it, but, um, uh, they see, they see reasons to be optimistic. [00:33:00] They see reasons to hope. I mean, you have a military. Stalemate. This is, again, we're, our friend Fred Kagan would probably slap me, but you, you have, you have something like a stalemate on the battlefield.

Um, you have a Fred, if you're listening, it's Aaron dot McClain at no, I'm sorry, you have, you, you, you have a, you have a battlefield stalemate. Um, and look, by the way, if you press these guys, McRyan is a brilliant guy. Um, with an incredible record of service and he's a sort of self professed optimist on the Ukrainian cause.

And I, I am a supporter of the Ukrainian cause, um, of course, but you, you press folks who are optimistic about their battlefield prospects and the, the language starts to get, you know, they, they start to talk about, you know, well, you know, there's a lot of domains of warfare. Um, there's of course this ground campaign and the counter offensive, but you have to keep in mind, there's also the information campaign.

There's the, this, there's that. And then, you know, there's this question of like, could Russian politics ultimately implode? And, and to me, some of that does seem to sort of distract from the. The hard military realities that, that the Ukrainians are facing on the battlefield where there's just not, not a ton of [00:34:00] progress, but yeah, we, of course, you know, we supporters of Ukraine would like to see, you know, um, Vladimir Putin get it essentially, um, uh, which has risks of its own, of course, because there's no guarantee, by the way, that what comes out of.

Any kind of unstable moment in Russia like that is some is better for the West or better for Ukraine. It could possibly be worse. Nevertheless, like when you're stuck in a stalemate like that, you're looking for something to alter the fundamental calculus on either side. They're looking for the same thing to happen on our side.

For, uh, you know, a new American administration, um, uh, that is perhaps, um, you know, a cold to the Ukrainian cause, um, uh, for us, you know, a split in NATO, right? You have, um, you have Hungary are already, um, skeptical of the Ukrainian cause. You have forces in Polish politics. You have forces in, uh, in Slovakian politics.

Um, but have you been surprised about Poland? I mean, they, the, the, despite the. The political winds, the way they were blowing in Polish politics. I get that this [00:35:00] for Poland, more than most countries, Russian advances into Ukraine could pose an existential threat. I get that. I'd say it goes without saying that said, I'm still surprised by how quickly the winds shifted politically in Poland as it relates to, as it related to, to Russia.

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I, I think it's, it's obviously like positive and. I don't know if I was surprised by it exactly. I mean, the Poles, uh, you know, have a, have a long tradition of, um, of being threatened by a Russian empire and anything that suggests that a Russian empire is resurgent, um, it behooves them to take it seriously.

And they are obviously taking it seriously. Of course, they have a long history of being, uh, crushed by the German empire as well. Um, it's, it's the German, you know, the, the German. Odyssey on all this has been the most fascinating to me, and it's sort of unsurprising to see that, you know, in the first few months after the invasion in 22, they seem to get very serious, uh, and, and, uh, you know, seem to commit to higher targets for defense spending and so forth.

I almost wrote, I, I I didn't, in the end, I, um, I, [00:36:00] I, I blinked and had a moment of moral cowardice, but when there was this discussion of, um. Uh, of increased German defense spending. I did want to send in an op ed somewhere like the journal and say, um, you know, guys, are we sure? Are we sure that we really want increased Germans defense spending?

You know, the, the, the contributions of, of a unified Germany to international security over the course of the last 150 years or so have been, you know, decidedly mixed. Uh, and like, are we all sure that's what we want? Maggie Thatcher, Maggie Thatcher, who both you and I admire, was opposed to German reunification.

Um, and, uh, you know, uh, there's, there's, um, there's something to be, I should, full disclosure, my dad was, was a World War II veteran, and the only acceptable, indeed, insisted upon form of racism in the McLean household when I was growing up was anti German sentiment. Um, uh, so I, it comes from a, from a deep place for me, and I realize this is all a bit superficial and unfair.

Nevertheless, nevertheless, but yeah, no, so like, obviously, So just as we are sitting here sort of thinking about, gosh, wouldn't it be great if things fell apart in Moscow, um, and it [00:37:00] changed the calculus in some way. And by the way, it's happened before in Russian history. You get people like, you know, um, Mearsheimer and others saying, you know, the Russians always win these long attritional fights.

Um, they, they get their act together and they grind it out. And obviously there's a record to support that. Well, in 1917, it didn't quite break that way. You know, like there was a long attritional fight and then the Russian state collapsed. But they're sitting, to your point, they're sitting there and hoping that something similar happens in the structures of NATO or the United States.

If not a collapse of those structures, then a, a reorientation of them such that the Ukrainian interest is harmed. Uh, I want to talk about, uh, your, your podcast a little more before we. Cause there's another question that came up in one of your other episodes that I've been meaning to ask you about, but before we do that, can you just walk through a little bit about your history?

I did, I did some of this in the introduction, um, your, how, how you wound up in the Marines. And then how your career went in the direction that it did after you left the Marine Corps. Yeah, [00:38:00] sure. Um, so like I said, I grew up in the, in the DC area as a, as a, as a nerd, uh, with, with parents who were news junkies and very engaged in, in politics.

And, uh, I was in college on 9 11. Um, and I, you know, like, like a lot of folks, um, uh, consider joining the military right away. Um, as it happened, um, uh, we invaded Iraq in March of my senior year of college and in April we won. We won the war. Statue of Saddam came down and, you know, I, I'd grown up with a, with a Army veteran, career army officer, dad, um, and if you'd ask me as a kid, like, what's the one thing you're, like, never gonna do when you grow up, I would have said as a teenager, I'm never gonna join the military.

Never. Like, get up early in the morning, get yelled at, get short haircuts, none of this appeals to me. And so once, once it seemed like Iraq had been resolved, and I was about to graduate college, I So this is April, like, the statute comes down April 9th. 2003. And, and I remember I was in Umm [00:39:00] Qasr that day actually, the day I'd come from Kuwait and then we went back to Kuwait.

That night, and then we, then our, the civilian team in Iraq or what became the civilian team in Iraq made our move in on April 15th. So this is, but just to timestamp it, so you're, so it's, it's, it's mid April 2003. You're about to finish college and you're watching all this thinking there, there we go again.

The American military, you know, uh, does the right thing, performs brilliantly and. It's over. Yeah, it was like the gulf war part two. Yeah, and I so so I moved on I had I already had Arrangements to go to graduate school so I went to graduate school and But then obviously as the years went on it became apparent that I had and you went and you studied what in graduate school medieval Arabic thought Of all the, of all the hands on practical stuff.

And where is this? Where are you in graduate school? At Oxford. At Oxford. And I, I'd done kind of great books in philosophy as an undergrad and, uh, had pitched the folks who funded this, uh, this course of study on, well, look, I've done, I've done the great books of the West, so I'll just kind [00:40:00] of, kind of move East and keep going.

And it was, you know, immediately post 9 11. So they found that to be an attractive, um, prospect. And it was, it was interesting. And I, I, I, I learned plenty, but I also, you know, became, it became apparent to me that in fact, I had missed nothing. Um, that there was a lot of fighting, in particular at this point, sort of 2004, 5, 6, in Iraq.

Um, and you were, you were in Iraq in 3 and 4, is that right? Yeah, I was there, uh, I, I went to, uh, I, I, I went into Iraq full time, so to speak. I was in and out. Before April 15th, but, um, I went in full time April 15th. Before that I was in Kuwait, and before that I was in Doha at Camp Basalia for a couple months, but, um, during the major combat operations.

But from April 15th, 03, till the end of June, 04. So when we, quote unquote, handed over sovereignty, uh, at the end of June of 2004, is when, um, I left, and that's when the, kind of, the Brimmer team left. Um So I, I was gone by summer of 04. So, um, [00:41:00] uh, I, I stayed in graduate school. I worked for a while as a freelancer, uh, in the Middle East.

I was living in Cairo, um, in 2006. And I finally just said to myself, you know, this is, um, if I, if I feel like I have some sort of obligation to serve. You know, both as a, as a, as an act of patriotism, but also just sort of, because of what my, what my family does, um, there's really no excuse. Like I'm, I'm, I am missing something that there's no excuse to miss now.

So I, I, I mean, I essentially flew back to the United States and joined the Marines. I mean, there's more to it, but that was basically what happened. Um, and so I went through OCS, I became an infantry officer and I ended up, I mean, I had decent Arabic at this point in my life, having lived in the region and studied, studied Arabic for years, never once set foot in an Arabic speaking country, not a layover in an airport.

Um, uh, I think we flew over the Gulf on my way back from Afghanistan. So that was as close as I came, but I went to, I went to Afghanistan as a young infantry officer. I was platoon commander, um, uh, acting company executive officer for a period. And it was a wild, um, it was a wild deployment [00:42:00] on a human level, at a professional level.

Um, uh, the, the Marine brigade I was a part of when I first got there conducted the largest assault, um, since Vietnam to seize this, uh, district called Marja. And I, Dan, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie, um, A Bridge Too Far, great World War II movie. No. Oh, okay. Well, first of all, I highly recommend it.

We're going to add it to our list. It's a wonderful, wonderful World War II movie starring everyone. I mean, everyone's, it's one of those movies, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, uh, everyone's in this movie, but they, you know, it's based on Operation Market Garden where these airborne divisions were dropped on these different bridges.

And then the plucky, uh, armored column led by Michael Caine has to drive through and connect them all. So I was in the, The equivalent of the Michael Caine organization sort of driving through, uh, the minefields to get to these Marine heliborne assault companies that had gone into this Taliban stronghold.

Unlike the movie and unlike Market Garden, we did in fact get to, uh, to the Sean Connery organization. We, we made it to the end of the line, um, and then held onto this place and there was, you know. [00:43:00] pretty intense combat on the front end. And then it transitioned to, um, you know, classic small wars, counterinsurgency stuff where this was really my real political education happened in these months.

Um, because I became, you know, the de facto mayor of, you know, a chunk of the Southern part of Marja. Um, and I had gone as a, you know, card carrying believer. In, you know, democracy promotion, the freedom agenda. I really thought that we were going to remove the Taliban boot from the neck. Of the oppressed Afghan farmer who would then rise up and seek all the things that man naturally wants you want to vote you want, you know, access to markets, etc, etc.

And I, I quickly became more of a, what I'll describe as a small are realist. Um, uh, this was just not how life in Helmand province went. Um, that things were much more motivated by base considerations like greed and fear. And, um, you know, I had the most [00:44:00] guns and money of any political player in my little part of town.

And so everyone kind of had to at the very least pay attention to, um, to what we were doing. And I learned, I learned a lot and learned some lessons very, in a very difficult manner. Um, but it was, um, Um, that was my, that was sort of the, um, the most important part of my Marine experience. I ended up staying in for seven years, um, uh, cause I, I had the chance to go teach at the Naval Academy for the last, last three years I was in, cause otherwise I would have gotten out right at the end of that time in Afghanistan.

Um, so then came to DC and I've been doing a variety of odd jobs, uh, since, um, and you, you made reference to my, my service with Senator Cotton. I spent two years as his, uh, legislative director and foreign policy advisor, crazy couple of years to 2019 and 2020. Right. And you were, you were very, I remember when Cotton came out early raising questions about the, the origin of COVID and, uh, and, and the, and he was like one of the first, at least public figures to policymaker types to, to, um, author, if you will, the, the [00:45:00] lab leak theory and you, you were working for him at the time, right?

I was, and I have to say. Senator Cotton was, um, basically first out of the gate, um, in terms of not, not just the, the, the, the lab leak dimension, which was an important dimension, which I believe he has been completely vindicated, um, but COVID more broadly. Um, and credit where it's due, you know, as a former staffer, there's this, um, there's this tendency to want to sort of wink, wink, you know, note that like the role of the staff played or the role that you played.

Um, uh, this was 100 percent Senator Cotton, Tom Cotton personally, who I can remember it was essentially walked into the office one day, um, uh, at the beginning of January, um, uh, 2020 and beginning of January, beginning of January. Wow. And we were, you know, he obviously serves on the intelligence. Committee and has access to information that that I don't or didn't at the time and don't now and nevertheless There were open sources of information at the time and [00:46:00] there's this amazing newsletter John Ellis news items, which I'm an addict at this point in my life.

Yeah, so John Ellis had a piece Um, aggregated a piece the last week of December 2019 about a mysterious flu like illness that was Wait, wait, wait. So wait, Ellis had a piece in his By the way, this is John Ellis's piece, uh, sub it's a sub stack. It's, as Aaron said, it's called News Items. I highly recommend subscribing to it.

It's, it's, it's, um The origin story of that is pretty amazing. So hold on. Let's just So his piece is when? It's late 2019? I believe it's the last week of December 2019. He's, you know, in that list. of stuff. He's got like one of the items is there's a mysterious flu like illness in Wuhan. And Senator Cotton, uh, saw that, um, and essentially instructed us, his team.

But were we at this point dialed into coming pandemic or? No, we, we be in the United States and the United States government. Absolutely not. [00:47:00] Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Yes. Okay. So he sees that item. And he, I've never heard this, I've never heard this part of the story. We've had Cotton on to talk, Tom on to talk about the lab, his, his work on the lab leak theory.

I've never heard this. So this is, this is like story behind the story. So, so he sees this little item. He comes into the office and says, pay attention, watch this. I want regular updates. Um, uh, this, you know, essentially this could be a big deal. Um, and we did, and that's sort of the first into the second week of January.

And by the third week of January, where there is some international attention starting to focus on all this, and this is right around when, uh, the Chinese. Um, closed down travel out of Wuhan, but by the third week of January, he is basically reta I mean, the entire policy team, uh, for Senator Cotton, which for a U.

S. Senator is about, you know, 15 people, um, is at this point essentially monitoring this issue full time, providing him with regular updates, and he is beginning the first big fight was actually not over the lab, but was over [00:48:00] travel. Um, and he begins to personally lobby President Trump, Vice President Pence, and we, on his behalf and at his instruction, begin to lobby sort of all of our various contacts and counterpoints all across the government and, you know, encourage other senators and their staffs to do the same, to shut down travel with China.

That was the first sort of big evolution in all this. Um, and I, I don't think it's, it's not an overstatement to say that, um, if not for Senator Cotton, like, um, Uh, that question would not have been called as early as it was, which I actually do think, um, bought us some time. The fact that we did at the end of January shutdown travel bought us some time.

I can also remember, by the way, I can remember sitting there in my office looking at literally looking at the Google maps of Wuhan. Um, with, you know, there's this, there was that small CDC facility right near the wet market. And then there's the Wuhan Institute, which is not that far away, um, across town and looking at it with other members of the team and with Senator Cotton, that, that all does look kind of close to one another.

You know, it really, really came from a, from a bat in the [00:49:00] wet market. So yeah. I will tell you there's only one, I, this is an amazing, that is an incredible story. There's only one other political figure that I know who, who was as early on COVID as, as Tom Cotton. And that is Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is, this is not a, this is not a, this is not a blanket defense of Benjamin Netanyahu.

But it is, we, we, you know, this, this is in this book I've talked about on this podcast last few episodes, Saul Singer and I have a book coming out November, which is a follow up to Startup Nation. And, uh, We have a chapter in the book on Israel dealing with COVID and, and its vaccination campaign. The chapter is called Vaccination Nation on, on how Israel was very early, not only on COVID, but early on, on, on its vaccination, uh, campaign and, but Ron Dermer tells us the story who, uh, was at the time ambassador.

to, uh, the U. S., Netanyahu's ambassador to the U. S., and he's in some meeting with Netanyahu, and, [00:50:00] and Netanyahu, and it's, it's like late December, early January, and Netanyahu says things are about to really get shaken up, uh, in the U. S. And, and, and Dermot's like, what, you think, you think, uh, Sanders is on the move.

You think that he was thinking about the New Hampshire primary and he was like, Sanders, you know, is, is skating steak, gaining steam against Biden. And you know, he's going to win New Hampshire and you know, and, and, and Dermot was totally focused on the democratic primaries and, and that's near, it was like, all of that doesn't matter.

He's like, watch this. It's a version of what you're saying. He didn't have the John Ellis news item and God knows what source of intelligence he had, but he was like this, this, there's something happening with this, with this virus that ultimately, and it's going to shake everything up in the, I can, I can remember Senator Cotton going on TV.

I think it was. If not the third at the latest, the fourth week of January, and this is the middle of the impeachment trial. Remember, this is, this is Trump's first impeachment, um, going on TV about impeachment and being asked questions about impeachment and essentially responding, you know, I [00:51:00] just, I just think in a few months, um, uh, and certainly in a few years, like none of us are going to remember this trial.

Um, I, I think, um, that it's this flu like illness in Wuhan that actually is going to be what characterizes the history of this period. And he has this talent. I watched him do it a few times when I was there to take these prescient positions early, often positions that are outrageous to the left. The lab leak dimension of all of this was certainly outrageous to the left.

Though, if, if I may, I should re, I should remind listeners that at the end of January 2020, the idea of shutting off. Travel with China was quote unquote, xenophobic, um, and quote unquote, racist, both terms that were hurled at Senator Cotton, um, uh, uh, you know, to take the pandemic seriously in any way, or the fact that there would be a pandemic, um, was, um, something that the left met with absolute hostility, but certainly the lab leak thing specifically they did.

And he was called any number of names. And again, I think it's just been totally, totally vindicated. He has a trick. Where, where he, where he does that, well, he did this also with Iran early on, [00:52:00] uh, uh, with when I think he was in the house maybe, uh, on, um, on the letter he wrote to, to Khamenei, uh, basically, uh, don't, yeah, brand new Senator, I think brand new Senator and yeah, maybe his brain, maybe he's a freshman and then the New York times piece, which I was also there for the, the op ed in December of 2020, which was basically, you know, Long story short, like, let's use the National Guard.

Let's, let's use the National Guard. Let's, we, we, we, there is, there is a tradition and a legal structure in America, um, for restoring public order. Um, we, you know, he, he cited a poll in that piece, um, uh, that showed that such a position was popular, that a majority of Americans supported it, but obviously.

You know, the world, you know, lit on fire in response to this op ed. Certainly the New York Times did, um, even though it was a, it was a reasonable policy proposal. Um, uh, and, and I think again, in the long run, he was, he was vindicated on that. It's a, it's a, it's a magic trick he does. Um, okay. I want to, um, before we wrap.

I want to ask you about another one of your, uh, [00:53:00] episodes, uh, on the podcast, on, on your podcast, um, which was about, um, revolution in military affairs is it was with, uh, Andrew Kreponiewicz who worked for years at the office of, uh, net assessment in the Pentagon, which sort of like an in house think tank, if you will, in the Pentagon that works, uh, that, uh, is that the.

at the, uh, works at the direction of the secretary of defense and he's had a whole range of interesting positions. But one of the topics you two talk about is the changing character of warfare and how ill and whatever form of warfare we are engaged in and we're learning a lot from doesn't necessarily service that well in the.

Next phase of warfare we have to be involved in and you, you and, and Andrew talk about your experience in Afghanistan and, you know, the amount of time you spent or the stories you were telling earlier in this conversation, you know, side of the road, trying to figure out how to, how to protect your fellow Marines from, from, you know, roadside IEDs and just, just sort [00:54:00] of the, the, the real kind of, in that case, counterinsurgency warfare or the kind of counter, uh, trench warfare we're seeing in, um, in, in the Russia Ukraine war now and how all of these forms of war we're seeing, and those two are very different, will likely be dramatically different from what we will see potentially in a China Taiwan confrontation, that the, that the, the pace is moving so fast, both in technology and, and battlefield strategy of, uh, the war leaders or the leaders leading countries that are engaged in war, that we, we spend all this time in Iraq and Afghanistan a couple of decades, fighting one way, and it.

We learned a lot and in a sense, maybe irrelevant is too strong word and obsolete is too strong a word, but it will, it will matter so little to how we have to relative to how we'll have to engage with China and Taiwan. Yeah. I mean, just to sum up the Afghanistan Iraq piece on this, you know, I, I used an F 18 once, um, uh, [00:55:00] called in an F 18 once, um, probably multiple times actually, um, to kill a Taliban IED emplacer.

Um, with, with, with the gun, uh, with, with the gun on, you know, to do a gun run with an F 18. So this is a, you know, multi. So you call an F 18 to take out. Some dude at the side of the road. Some dude with a shovel and a homemade bomb, right? So that's, that's American power. Who's just, who's, who's trying to just blow up some vehicle.

Military vehicle. He's trying to kill Marines. He's trying to kill Marines. Right. And we, you know, smoke them if you got them. You have F 18s in a pattern. And that's what we're using F 18s for in 2010. Now. What's happening in Ukraine is a better guide, I think, as we try to visualize what could happen in the Pacific, but it's still not, it still doesn't get us there for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is, you know, the United States and Russia are not, are not at war in Ukraine, so you don't actually have a conflict between two major powers.

I mean, Russia obviously is weaker than China, but nevertheless, [00:56:00] you don't have a confrontation between two nuclear powers with well funded countries. top of the line militaries, which there are a lot of scenarios in the Western Pacific where that's what you could get, where you could get a direct clash between the United States and China, something that has not, uh, not occurred since the early 1950s.

I know you had Mike Gallagher on the show, uh, a few weeks ago to talk about, uh, your, your, your co instructor, talk about the Korean war instructor. Um, you know, that was the last time the United States and China fought each other. It was a different United States, but it was a very different China. The Chinese have, we talked about the Gulf war a little while ago.

The Chinese along with the rest of the world. Paid very close attention to the Gulf War because the Gulf War signaled something about, um, the progress of American arms, um, uh, that was unmistakable that we, we had achieved, we, to, to Krepenavich's point, there had been a revolution in military affairs, um, of which the Gulf War was an, was an illustrating kind of exclamation point where we were able through our combination of [00:57:00] Sensors and increased surveillance capability to find and then strike with precision targets at a rate and in a cycle that was at that point, you know, on unseen in human history.

And the amount of munitions you needed to destroy a target, um, uh, between, you know, even Vietnam and the Gulf war, but certainly the second world war in the Gulf war had reduced by orders of magnitude. Um, uh, and to do this, you have to have a lot of money and you have to have a lot of technology, but the United States had taken the advances in information technology, um, uh, space, right?

The GPS system and so forth, and found ways to use these technologies for a war that made us. Circa 1991 to, you know, utterly dominant. And so the Chinese military has spent a generation planning how to deal with the United States's abilities to win a war like the Gulf war, where we build up this expeditionary force, we establish this space where our sensors and strike capabilities can work.

And then we [00:58:00] essentially own the battlefield. Um, and they have basically, I mean, one, the easiest way to understand what they've done is they've done the same thing with, with the sensor strike complex in reverse. Right. They have, they have got these capabilities for themselves. So we are now in what, what Kraepernovich would call a mature revolution.

That is to say a revolution where both sides have achieved similar capabilities. So they have a sensor strike complex. We have a sensor strike complex. There's as much closer to their country. We have to still forward deploy if we're going to do anything, um, uh, within the first island chain or in Taiwan, which is obviously a big advantage to them.

And they, their operating concept is to create this, um, anti access area denial space where we go inside of it. We try to come to the rescue of Taiwan. We get killed. Um, now, so that's, that's kind of where we've been, you know, that's, that's, that's where we've been slash where we are. But your question is, you know, what is the, what does the future look like?

What is it? That's sort of what, that's, those are the. Uh, you know, to use [00:59:00] the Rumsfeld ism, you know, those are the sort of the, the known unknowns is like thinking through how that's going to work if there's actually a direct clash, but there's so many other elements to warfare now that actually have never really been.

been employed at scale, certainly, obviously not in a clash of major powers. You have these new domains of war, like cyber, you have these new technologies, um, uh, like, uh, AI and the kind of autonomous systems that they can, uh, that that technology can drive. Um, you have, um, you have just areas of warfare where there, there has not been warfare in the past, like space, right?

Um, you have these creepy new technologies like, you know, DNA targeting, you know, biological. weapons, right? Which is, which is a thing, by the way, in case folks have not been tracking that. Um, how does all of this look like? What does it look like? If the, and by the way, there's still nukes, like you still have two nuclear armed powers, by the way.

Oh, by the way. And the Chinese are, are, are doing their best by the way, to, to expand their arsenal. So. Walter Mead [01:00:00] has a great series of pieces over at tablet, actually, an American domestic politics, which he sort of open with the discussion of how we're, we're kind of in this moment of a singularity where the pace of technological change is so fast that it's hard for any of us sitting here to just.

Picture what the world's going to look like in 10 or 20 years. It's, it's, it's like, we can't see through, we can't see through the singularity. We can't see through the black hole. Um, and my broadest point is, I mean, the same thing is happening in warfare and the, the existence of the nuclear weapons and the deterrent power that they have, you know, provided in terms of heading off a major power clash since, um, since 1945, um, has, has contributed to this because it is, it is, is obviously in good ways, um, kept.

Major powers from clashing so you don't you don't see these technologies at work. You know, it's it's it's I fear my deepest fear is we're in a situation a little bit like Athens and Sparta before the launch of the Peloponnesian War where Thucydides [01:01:00] famously has this Comment that the, the war is, is so savage and, and so dramatic because these two civilizations are at their peaks.

They're, they're at the peak of their power, their wealth, their, you know, their adoption of different technologies. And then they, they put them to, you know, essentially mutual destruction. Um, the, the pace of technological change affects warfare too, and it is really, really. Difficult to think about what the generation to come looks like.

And I, I have kids, so I, you know, it worries me and it should worry, worry us all and, and, you know, not to, not to end this philosophical discourse with the shameless plug, but like, this is, this is the project we're engaged in at school of war. Like, this is what I try to use the podcast for is to pick apart different little pieces of this.

So before, before you go, I, I know we've gone way longer than I said, but it's a fascinating conversation. Two things. So what is the focus of the School of War? I mean, I, I talked about it a little bit in the introduction, but what are you trying to do with it? Because it's one of those novel concepts for a podcast I've seen out there.

Well, thanks. [01:02:00] Yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a lot of fun. It's, it's gotten frankly more attention than I had anticipated it would. It started out as a borderline self indulgent project where I would invite Um, people who had recently written something interesting about military history or strategy or even diplomatic history sometimes to come on the show and talk about their work.

Um, and the broader project was, is, um, that the study of military history specifically, but also strategy and diplomatic history as well, um, is in a perilous state in the American Academy. Um, uh, I mean, we could, we could, we've done a lot of speculating this episode, so we could speculate as to as to why, um, possibly as a consequence of Vietnam and the American left sort of hostility to the military, the notion that you would simply, you know, as a serious scholar, you know, say.

Study, study, study what happened in World War II. You know, why, why, why did this or that campaign in North Africa go well or poorly as, as the work of an academic? I mean, it's basically unheard of, um, in the American Academy today. It exists. There are, there are points of light out there, but it [01:03:00] is not a robust community.

Strangely enough, it's a little bit healthier in the UK, I've discovered. There are, there are per capita, there is more high quality scholarship coming out of the UK on these subjects. So. Part of it was, um, which is interesting because the UK defense establishment seems to be in such, such a state of kind of perilous, you know, lack, you know, disrepair, lack of attention, lack of resource allocation.

Yeah, I think, I think that's obviously correct. But for some reason, the British Academy, um, seems less, um, less diseased than ours. Um, uh, so the, the idea was, um. You know, war is a terrible thing. Um, but ignorance of war is dangerous. Um, because we, all of us as citizens, right, going to be affected by a war by, by a great power clash.

Um, uh, we vote, you know, and then some of us work in Washington on policy and political questions. And so ought to know more of this than we do. And so at it's at the most basic level, that's the project of the podcast is to try to teach lessons about war. And we talk to, um, You know, general, [01:04:00] former general, we had an HR McMaster on the show.

Um, uh, we have scholars on the show. We have historians and we go back and forth. I have an episode coming out on Spartan grand strategy this week. So it's, um, you know, we go back to, um, to ancient days and right up to the present. Um, and I, I have, I have a very simple method of choosing episodes, which is if it's an interesting person with something interesting to say, broadly speaking on these subjects, they, they come on the show and we talk just like this.

It's great. I highly recommend it. It's school of war. We'll post it in the show notes. Uh, there are more topics I wanted to talk to you about. Uh, but we're going to have to have you come back on because, you know, his head will grow, but I didn't expect us to get so diverted with like an eight minute, you know, geek out on, um, on Tom Cotton, but, uh, but you know, such as such, such as life, uh, but it was, it was, uh, actually quite, quite illuminating the entire, the entire discussion.

So I appreciate you taking the time. And, uh, look forward to having you back. I mean, you're not, you're not at Gallagher level yet. You know, he's on path to his fifth, [01:05:00] to his fifth episode. But, uh, but you're, but you're getting started. So there's, you know, you have a future. I am genuinely honored. This has been a blast.

Thanks for having me. Alright, alright. Thanks, Aaron.

That's our show for today. To keep up with Aaron McClain, you can find him on the website formerly known as Twitter. You can search for at Aaron, A A R O N B, his middle initial, McLean, M A C L E A N. And of course you can find his work at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies, also on the website formerly known as Twitter.

You can find him at at F D D. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.