From Powerline Blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the power Line Show with your host Steve Hayward. Welcome to another classic format episode of the power Line Show, a conversation, this time between me and Colonel Austin Bay. Now, this conversation is made necessary by the fact that the United States is suddenly engaged in two proxy wars, one against Russia in the Ukraine conflict and the other one essentially against Iran in the Israeli Hamas conflict going
on right now. And then lurking in the background, of course, is the threat of China, which is arming themselves rapidly and who knows what their
intentions and strategy are. But there are a few people better placed to unpack all this than Colonel Bay, who is one of the proprietors of the Strategy Page and a weekly columnist for Creator Syndicate, And in the show notes I've linked to his column from last week that goes over the landscape of these proxy wars and what needs to be done, what we should be thinking about,
and how serious the entire scene is. And so, without further ado, let's get going with Colonel Bay. All right, Austin let's talk about America's two or maybe three proxy wars, depending on how you size up the field. Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, which were obviously implicated in and then the China question, which is on everybody's mind. So let's start with Ukraine in Russia, which was the main focus of our attention to war until
over seven. But I guess my opening question is I guess I'll just jump to this one. Can Ukraine win or does Russia really have the material and manpower advantages that over time make it impossible for Ukraine to win? What do you think? How? Well, look, defining victory is difficult in almost every single war. Now what constitutes winning. The Union beat the Confederacy beat it badly in eighteen sixty five, but there was a resistance of a type
that went on for another century, so you know was there was? And I've used that in class as an example because the students think about that and then see, oh, I get it. The impoverishment in the south of the resistant segregation and the like Ukraine has made. Zelensky has made it his mission to recover all territory that was Ukrainian territory prior to twenty fourteen prior to February twenty fourteen, and Russia could claim it's got a win if it retains
any piece of Ukraine, especially Crimea. But at the same time, look at the horrendous losses Russia has suffered. I know some of it is estimated, Steve, but there's enough evidence out there on the battlefield for the destruction of scores of those Battalion Task Groups BTG's tact tactical groups that they had on their order of battle in February of twenty twenty two. And the other thing, it's not just the decimation of their manpower, but the exposure of how
shoddy many of their weapons systems are. Russia has suffered a huge loss in that sense. But if I know where you're going, I think you're going back territory. Can Ukraine retake all that territory. I'm not sure it can. I hate to say that it's because of the Russian's ability to dig in and force a static World War One type type battle, at least on the
on the Crimean peninsula. There are ways that and I've heard the discussions the creativity of uh creative ideas of be able to isolate the Crimean peninsula and essentially starve the Russian forces out, possibly, But the nuclear sort of damocles also swings over this. When does Putin decide? I think that's a good metaphor. It is the sort of damocles Putin decide to shoot a demonstration nuke or actually use a tactical warhead on a Ukrainian target and bad pun coming. But
once the international fallout, how does NATO respond? What does Ukraine do? Uh? And that's it that could happen? Is there a negotiation process to avoid that? I certainly hope so. But again, can Ukraine win? Does some degree? Ukraine has one? And I know that that there are a lot of teeth gnashing. If you say that they have won by stopping Russia's Blitzkreek and by exposing all the weaknesses in the Russian system, I'll say
the corrupt Putin olugark Gark system. Russia still retains a great deal of combat power. The issue they have to face two is do they want two new provinces in Ukraine at the expense of China taking Siberia? And I know that sounds far out, but it's not far out right. I don't think that's far out at all. I wrote a problem. Well, let's just say I wrote a column about that, I want to say, four or five
years ago. Some of it had worked in with my China chapter in my last book, Cocktails from Hell, and I got some very curious email responses about that. Babe, what are you smoking? I said, I'm not smoking anything. I know what the Chinese say about Siberia, and also the promise that the Bolsheviks made that they'd give it back what the Tsar took, and that hasn't happened. And it's a treasure chest of mineral wealth and energy
wealth. It's such something that the Chinese Communist Party covets. Yeah, all right, So the next question is what do you think US policy should be about this? I mean, I you know, I don't know tactics and strategy that well, it's not my specialty, but it seemed to me that the Biden administration has had a rather halting and hesitant disposition towards arming Ukraine. You know, we keep saying, no, we're not going to give you
in one tank's okay, we'll give you one tanks. No, you shouldn't have f sixteens, okay, we'll give you sixteens and finally, you know, a couple months ago cluster bombs. And you know, it looks to me at times like the Biden administration is reluctant, perhaps to provoking Russia to use it a tactical nuke as you mentioned, or for other reasons, is slow to provide the kind of weaponry that it would allow Ukraine to actually push Russia out. How do you size it up? And what do you think
we should be doing? I mean the criticism you hear from certain people on the right of course as well, we're giving him a blank check, which we're not doing. But it is expensive, So what do you think we should be doing? Well? Just remember the Biden administration's first reaction was to offer Zelenski a place to flee to, and he comes back with one of the you know, I'm paraphrasing it, but the equipped that says, uh, you know, uh, I don't need a transportation, I need ammunition.
You know, I don't need a taxi. You know, I need tanks. There have been three or four riffs on on what Zelensky said uh, And that's indicative of the way. I know this is another subject. But the Biden administration mismanagement in foreign policy, and I would say it even applies uh domestically uh uh. The Afghanistan debacle. It was absolutely unnecessary. I'm not going to go off on it. But a non combatant evacuation operation a NEO. Uh. I don't say this in any special way. There's
a joint pub publication that tells you how to do it. I've been involved in one exercise I helped, I helped plan plan one. That was another another exercise, and I know how to plan one myself. But I had a regular army buddy who put together with a small team uh a NEO to extract uh uh, diplomats and American uh personnel in nationals from Kinshasha in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And he put it together in two days. Of
course, he had Pentagon backing him up. Nominally the State Department was in charge. But when you've got Air Force aircraft and a Navy amphibious warfare ship heading down to be off the Cameroon coast, it's really a military operation. And they messed that up by you know all, we don't want to look too strong, No, you want to look strong, And he didn't I didn't do that in the opening phases, figured that Russia was just going to
run over them. And they even made a statement again I'm paraphrasing, so we try to hold down on a crank email. Is that you know that about a Russian incursion or limited incursion or whateverever it was, Well, the Russians had planned and we saw it executed an all out invasion. They did not know how to conduct UH a operational combined arms operational UH operational offensive using
the military terms there. But they had airborne in it. They ran tanks in but they didn't they didn't have You never want to use tanks without mechanized infantry and infantry supports combined UH, combined arms and UH. The Ukrainians had been armed in some of this. You've got to give credit to the Trump
administration and and Great Britain. We had UH and through Poland advisors to UH improve the Ukrainian army and had had sent them javelin missiles and they picked up some of these modern more modern UH man carried anti tank weapons like in laws and the like. And then when the Russians just come in there, armored columns come in UH on on those roads. They knocked the lead tank off, knock one of the rear tanks off and force them off the road.
And then there were very few. Uh. I saw a lot of video. I'm going to back up just a second. I saw a lot of video right right as you know, the first first two weeks, and very in very few of the videos did I see the infantry and the armored personnel carriers deploy when at to support the taks. Most of them stayed in. It seemed to be they were staying inside their armored personnel carrier and even pulling back. And that's not the way you fight. Uh yeah, I'll give
you a history history on this. One of the best ways to teach, uh, show a class or even young soldiers how how to how to do it is study what fourth Armored Divisions Combat Command Reserve did in attacking the Battle of the Bulge. The operational commander was named Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams and it was the no it's I mean, you can't make this stuff up. It's
And then the infantry Armored Infantry Battalion commander was yours Jacques. Both of them extraordinary leaders and what they did, they took a company from the Tank Battalion and a company from the Armored Infantry Battalion. Put the two captains commanding those together and said, you guys are a team, B team and C team, and they of course, this is the way US and British armored forces were fighting in Western Europe after you know, the breakout from A from Normandy.
That's what we were doing then, and that's what we do now on an even more sophisticated and dangerous UH and is in the fancy words multi valent battle field. And you see when multi valent, Look look what the Ukrainians have done with armed drones. But there are ways they see the tank. The tank isn't dead. If you understand combined arms warfare and the Russian show they couldn't do it. That's what I mean that there's a loss here on
the Russians part. It's a loss of prestige. And plus they seem to have lost appear to have lost a lot of their better UH middle grade commanders because they don't teach their subordinates to UH. They are reluctant to give their subordinates the initiative to fight the immediate tactical battle. Therefore, a lot of Russian officers have been killed. That's not a change from World War Two at
all. Let's see. Yeah, so the question, I'm curious about it, and then we'll switch to the I know it was a reluctant I got off on talking about the military details, but they're relevant definitely to the quote unquote political political decisions. We should have sent. First of all, we could have cascaded F sixteen's out of American reserves and answer the reserves of some
of our NATO allies immediately. And the Biden administration even slowed down the passage of mid twenty nine's that were still in the arsenals of several NATO nations that were warsaw back nations. They could have passed those on down immediately and they didn't do it. And air power is important to combine to arms warfare, it really is, right. Yeah, a question I'm curious about. You
mentioned the Russian seem to have forgotten combined arms operations. Does Russia have the equivalent of our service academies like West Point or I mean, how do they educate the military they know? And I'm trying to remember the one that I'm sorry they had a really creative military thinker in the late seventies and early eighties who developed some concepts of his trying to institute bring them in to the Soviet army. And I can't remember his name, but he was a general and
also a professor. So look, Russia's got incredibly brilliant people that the world's right. Chess players, mathematicians, you know, musicians, artists, you know, But there they're governing system just does not encourage free thinking at all. Yeah, that's unfortunately, Yeah, what's sorry? Yeah, that's right. Well I'm tempted to half joke that most of them are in New York and Silicon Valley, but who knows. Uh, Well, let's shift gears to the Middle East. So, and I don't know where to start or
finish. I mean, I think we should think about what intelligence failures took place with Israel and the United States. Wall Street Journal has a story out here midweek that the United States intelligence agencies quit spying on or trying to track Hamas after nine to eleven, which seems irresponsible, and that's stupid. But
then I guess the big question is strategic one. It seems unlikely to me that Hamas would have launched this attack unless they and the Iranians had a larger grand strategy in mind, whether that's opening the second front of the North with Hesbola at a certain point, whether it involves more direct Iranian involvement, which we already see the hints of it with you know, the Houthis, as you mentioned in the article the other day, Houthi's shooting rockets over our ships.
Whether our ships are trying to intercept directed in israela that you know they could theoretically overwhelm both Iron Dome and our own ammunition and our missile anti missile frigates and so forth. So how do you size up the strategic scene? Go ahead and give us three or four of your main observations and concerns about this before we get into some of the nitty gritty of subduing Gaza. Jim
Donnegan and I a strategy page. They recorded a podcast, i'll say ten days ago about the intelligence failure, and both of us were having to you know, we don't all we've got is we hope good guesses right now. But it's clear that the Israelis, I think that this is clear, and the Israelis are saying this in public themselves, that they had their guard down at the local level, at the very local level. I'm not saying they
didn't have their electronic intelligence going. But if you take everything down to face to face in a area that you have blocked off to signals intelligence made sure that there are no bugs or the like, we're back to again face to face. Nothing is digital, nothing's recorded. If anything's recorded, it's on hand, done by hand, and that you can disappear from the digital and electronic surveillance. That it's absolutely necessary, but it's not complete, and you
can't think that it's complete. This is why you need human intelligence, human as it's called, in other words, a human spies. Now, the one thing that I mentioned I hope this makes it in that strategy page podcast is if you've studied and I have the Japanese deception plan that kicks in in late August or early September of nineteen forty one, the Japanese lead British and American intelligence to believe, yeah, they're going to do something, but they're
going south. They're going to the Dutch East Indies because they would have grabbed the oil. They want to be able to control le oil and this was something of any fix in the US Navy intelligence. Also what passed for the joint operations between the Army and Navy. Remember that was the you know, war department in the Navy department. We didn't have a Department of Defense. But this is what our best military minds thought, and also it was ratified
by our politicians. They wanted to think that, and the Japanese made sure that the British there in Hong Kong thought that. Of course, that wasn't the plan at all. They were going to go after Pearl Harbor and try to knock America out of the war with one heavy surprise attack. But the deception plan was something that fed into expectations. Hamas seems to have done that because the Israelis thought Harmas was and this is me coming up with a term
mellowing they wanted to develop and the like. In other words, they were feeding an expectation. Yet the terrorist mass murderers that founded Hamas and that commanded they're still committed to the eradication of Israel. And I did read an English translation of part of the Hamas Charter years ago. They I think it's fair for a Jew to say they want to eradicate Jews is what Hamas. Look, I'm not going to you know, I don't have it in front of
me. I'm just just just telling you. I mean, it's they're they're definitely committed to the complete eradication uh of Israel and they believe that, and heavens, I read the interview with one of the senior Hamas leaders who was a sconced somewhere in Lebanon, and he says, you know, we're justified
in doing anything, you know, because we're we're the oppressed. Were They fit right in with the crypto Marxist you know, ideology of oppression and the oppressed, the oppressed are always you know, justified in doing whatever they want,
you know, a day of rage and that kind of thing. So, uh well, I mean, we we always have this problem of not taking seriously what people like Hitler say or what the Iotola say, and we should take you know, when they say they want to destroy Israel and destroy the Great Satan, that's us, right, We're the big you know, we should take them seriously and not be all sentimental foolish people. But in particular, I mean, just you know, you mentioned a strategic deception.
Yeah. I mean with all those tunnels they're dug under Gaza and all the rest of that's pretty easy to imagine meetings of cells and everything's done on paper so as not to have an electronic paper trail. But on the other hand, you know, as we know, we've heard stories about this, the Hamas terrorists who came over the border in those paragliders. That's not something you just pick up in thirty minutes, you know, it takes a little bit
of practice. And apparently they trained up in Lebanon. Well you somebody should have seen them doing that. It should have been saying, gosh, why are a whole lot of Palestinians people coming from Gaza apparently learning how to fly paragliders. Are they opening up paragliding resort in Gaza? Probably not. I mean that seems to me like something that somebody should have said, something's up. Why are they doing that? Can't be good? Well, it's you
know, that's Hindslight's twenty twenty. It's and you know they're Palestinian. Uh camps area is still in uh uh uh Lebanon. It's it's hard to track five or six men that get on a boat in Gaza and then I get off a boat in Lebanon, and that's you could have sent them up there.
Increments. I'm just making this up, you know, just telling you that you want to you want to do the training and have the training, but you don't want to make it look like it's a huge You want to make it look like these are some guys on vacation, see paragliding you. So, yeah, okay, maybe that works. Sure, yeah, but it pays to be paranoid in the Middle East. And sorry, I'm sorry, say again, Stee that lost you there. Well I just say it, yeah, I know, we're having a couple of hiccuffs here. Uh.
I think it pays to be paranoid in the Middle East. I think we should have known that before now. But all right, let's talk about some of the you know, the nitty gritty on the ground here, gosh. I mean, you know, we know from our own experience in Rack and the subduing Felujah and other places that this is some of the most difficult fighting in urban settings that you can do. And so, uh, how do you think Israel's doing. What's your advice to them? What what are
the and what's the sensible strategy here. I don't really have a good feel for it. There were several good tactical studies of the US Army fighting in UH cities at the U in the latter days, latter months of World War two UH in in in German cities UH and also in towns, and it's if you could, you couldn't go around them. You were gonna have to UH, You're going to have to fight the Nazi forces that were hold up in these in these areas. And the photos UH tell the story. Lots
of artillery, lots of bombing. There was very little international political blowback or or cries in the United States about blowing up these German uh uh German cities, but the artillery and he also found out that you know, you don't want the tank to lead in, but there's nothing like a tank for blowing a hole in a in a building. So you don't have to waste infantry
going up there to UH to look for look for snipers. But the infantry stays back and keeps tries to keep In that case, Germans with panzer fausts or pans or shreks, they're and I personal carried and I tank weapons from getting a cheap shot at the tank, but you know, the tanks of
mobile pill box in that sense, we you can see that. And I know the Israelis really are good at this because they've they had to get good when they fighting mostly I'm thinking of the nineteen eighty two conflict in Lebanon, but you could see those tactics being used by the Iraqis with some American support
in the battle for Mosul. Again. You but we were also able to provide for the Iraqis attack helicopter support and you know, pinpoint as close as it can be pinpoint when you drop a two thousand pounds jay down, but the joint direct attack munition, it's two thousand pound bomb that is extremely precise on and when it dotonates and Mosoula started to look like some of those German cities or you know, just absolute devastation. And it's the choice is are
you going to lose your own soldiers to cheap shots and ambush. And one of the things in Iraq that was this was something the Tadamists tried to do when they're in the height of the insurgency in two thousand and four, in two thousand and five, and I pulled a tour in two thousand and four as a plans officer with Multinational Corps, so I know well about this.
They would rig some of the buildings with high explosives so that if some marines or army soldiers go in there, suddenly the entire neighborhood I was up, and uh, you know, you could always I suppose they would try to
blame it on the United States for doing it. But I saw a couple of the videos where some of these were triggered, and we'd figured out that they were triggered, and uh that they were, that they were heavily booby trapped, and there were some there was one that we managed to find figure out in a way to electronically detonate some of them, so we didn't have to even send troops in. But they had been the intel had picked up that this is what the uh, the gorillas, the sodomists as I used
to call them, uh had the plant. Well, yeah, there are other other names, but that was one that's got a laugh a laugh, It got it'd got it got a laugh. It's firepower. But then you have the media blowback, Oh you're killing you know you're killing and you may well be. But that's one of the pinous things about Amas is just like Saddam Hussein, human shields. You know, they fight, but you know they they use their own kids as as human shields. That's well, I'm
sure you caught the blowback. Well, I'm going to say, I'm sure you caught the blowback the last few days. That is, you know, comically, you know, comically stupid about Oh, the Israelis turned off the internet and shut down telecommunications in Gaza. Isn't that terrible? Well, you've just given the reason why they would do that, right, just you know, at least complicated trying to set off remote control bombs and so forth with
cell phones and whatnot. And why this is beyond the grasp of ordinary people is beyond me. But that's where we are, right, all kinds of stupidity that I've heard. I've heard this. This is not original with me by by any any means. I mean, but I've heard I heard this. And in the seventies, you know, from Vietnam veterans. I know a lot of them, Americans have seen so many war movies or something like
that, they think the war movies are real and they're not. You know, it's far worse than any war movie could ever capture, even though you know there's a few out there, the World War One ones that come close to it. But it's uh, it's you. They've got this. Oh why can't we talk about it? You know because in the movies, everybody stops and everybody talks about it. See, and that's that's not the way
it is. It's not the way it is at all. Yeah, So what do you what's your assessment of Iran and what their disposition is, what their grand strategy may be here? Do you expect them to get more directly involved? Do you think Hesbelow is going to launch a huge rocket barage and open up a second front? What? What do you think might be in
prospect here? All right? Had this discussion again with we didn't do this on a podcast, but Jim Donnegan, a Strategy Page editor, and I he and I've co authored the Quick and Dirty Guide to War series years ago. There's one here's here's one analysis that may have some credibility. Iran really doesn't want to get into it because they've got so much to lose, but they've got so much to gain, even they may have already gained. This
is they've scotched, at least temporarily the Israeli Saldi Rapro small. They've made it more difficult for the golf Arab states to cooperate with Israel. They've scotched the rapro schmall that was going on between Turkey and Israel. And I mean here, well, no, that's that's something that I know we got off on a Strategy Page podcast, but that's been going on slowly for the last two years. Despite the stupid things that a Erdwan sense and I address that
I wrote my column this week was about air to Wan. I used it also because it was the twenty ninth was one hundredth anniversary of the founding of a Turkish Republic by Kamal At of Turk and I didn't I did for a biography of At a Turk that focused on his military career that was published in twenty eleven. And aired Ian has out to undermine the Chemalist, the Kimalist state, and it's going to be you know, it's his ego state,
you know, the it's an ego state for erdo Is. But and it's come out you know sant Jamas is not a terrorist organization and the like. But at the same time when I and I condemn him for grand standing about it, and at the same time, several of these initiatives between Turkey and Israel UH involving oil and gas in the Mediterranean pipelines, you know, you
know, technology sharing, and I like they haven't been stopped. And then yesterday when I was turn turning into column but also doing some more research this this turned up on a couple of websites and it was a Bloomberg News UH
source on it. Turkey has been shipping UH a Zeri as Azerbaijan produced oil to Israel for a number of years and earlier earlier this week sometimes I say sometime between the twenty fourth of October and the and the thirtieth of October, a mal Cheese tanker with a million barrels of a Zeri crude pulled into eye Lot and it had loaded up and chay on the Turkish oil port on the Mediterranean. The Turks are still doing business with the Israelis, but the Iranians
are getting at least out of Airdwan all the statements they want. So that's that is I'm one of the details on that because I'm not sure how much the Iranians have really shaken the strategic rapro schmall involving Israel where it's Uh Arab Sunni Arab neighbors and UH and also with UH with with Turkey. It's I'm not sure that this This isn't exactly answering your question, but I think undermining the rapprochem was one of Iran's goals and they've done that, gotten that temporarily.
Do they really want to have an all out war Iran versus Israel. No, but they'd sure like the little Israel down by fighting his Balah, fighting Hamas. Also, I would say there's another proxy war going on in Syria that more directly involves Iran. And then you know the hoodies getting in it, firing their long range drones that the Navy Guided Missile destroyer intercepted. But they have the capability to launch those long range attacks. And a horror
story here. It's not none to scare, it's to provoke thought. Who says you couldn't put a small tactical nuclear warhead on one of those suicide drones and have it blow up in southern southern Israel. And does Iran in that case have plausible deniability? You know, yeah, it does. I'm I'm playing uh novelist here, except it's it's not a novelists. Something you have
to have to really really think about. But you also see that in order to hit Israel, even if you're firing them so that the flight path is going up the Red Sea, you're going over Saudi or part of Saudi Arabia, and you might even have some of their drones go over over Jordan in order to hit Israel. See uh. And that's that's something if I can think of it and talk to you on our on our podcast here, on your podcast, I guarantee you some Iranian uh, some some hard but thoughtful
Iranian. Uh. Al Kud's officers thought of that, He've done I've done a paper on it, and he thought of it before. Well, it's also occurred to me that there's a there's strategic Another strategic objective is pure public relations, not simply divert or disrupting the rapproach mode on the Abraham Accurds and so forth. But it's to pierce the image that Israel has enjoyed for the last several decades of being invulnerable that they can't possibly be defeated by the Arab
world. And you know, it's unthinkable that Israel will be defeated now literally destroyed, you know, like we did Japan in Germany and World War Two. But if you actually re orient the Arabs to thinking, gosh, you know, the Israelis can be taken down, that changes the ground going forward to the next twenty thirty years if you follow what I'm saying about that. In other words, they want to deal a reputational blow to Israel, and
it looks toeming like they're coming close to accomplishing that. I really don't think they are, despite their media advantage. Look, the Israelis cloak of and
vulnerability was pierced by their defeat at Chinese Farm in nineteen seventy three. That's that battle is actually a Japanese experimental agricultural station in Sinai, where essentially, as Israelis, who are masters that combined armed warfare, the tanks attacked by themselves and the Egyptian infantry men with anti tank missiles and rocket propel grenades not scores of them out and suddenly we were into this longer, longer war and
Israel wasn't gonna win it with a massive armor attack. And what does come out of that? Though? The Egyptians thought that they had recovered some of their dignity, and you end up with this cold peace that has persisted and still exists between Egypt and in Israel. This is one reason I think the Israelis really are going to go after Amas and attempt to kill as many H Moss terrorists and especially the leadership, because of the barbarity of the of the
atrocities. And the thing is is that somebody in Israel needs to have the guts to make sure that it's documented. So if you're going, if you're going, you see what I'm saying. You know, you paid the price and here it is and you came at us. I know this is so hard to uh deal with, especially when you have so many talk shows that are oriented to everybody has to feel good about everybody else. You know,
beheading. I'm making fun of it and you know it. But the thing is heading babies, These these work outrageous atrocities, and that feeds also in to the glorification of violence by the so called depressed against oppressors that go on
on the college campuses here. Now they see that's something, the fact that we absolutely have to engage and it's okay that may be, that may be a twenty year, twenty year struggle, but you see the damn well, if we're lucky, if they but they get to get back on point is the uh uh. I think you're gonna see Israeli power UH exercised. And if the Iranians made the mistake of trying a ballistic missile attack or the like, you'd you'd see the Israelis respond against against Iran. How would they do
that? Probably with their missiles on their submarines, their cruise missiles on the subs. But the Israelis have thought about it and it might even bring in US action, which I don't think the Iranians want, and the Russians are certainly in no position now to aid them if the US UH came in. But UH now those are I'm not saying that's gonna happen, But isn't that
uh essay I wrote last week? You have to watch this because if you did get engaged, if US gets engaged in the Middle East, that opens up the Pacific for a Chinese probe, right, well, that's what That's what I want to turn to next. Then is our last subject is the whole problem of China. So to state a few obvious things, China is building a formidable arsenal, you know, a serious navy to challenge ours land
based missiles. I understand that can deny possibly probably access to our carrier battle groups to the far western Pacific. You know, Invading Taiwan sounds like a difficult thing to undertake, but not impossible, I suppose, with their numbers and so forth. And the other part of the question is is, yeah, the circumstances in one sense look like favorable to China right now if they
wanted to grab Taiwan the old fashioned way. On the other hand, you know, people friends of mine and maybe you know David Goldman, two things they don't need to do that they can be patient, let it eventually just fall into their lap because we're overextended, decadent, not responding vigorously enough with our own military arrangement of forces and so forth. So I don't know what's your general assessment of the China problem and what should we do about it?
All right? My general assessment is almost as complicated as the two choices that you look, the Chinese would rather not uh get involved in a war. They take Sunsu seriously. You know, the acme of generalship is to win without fighting. And I'm paraphrasing five or six of his uh little epigrams. You know. But the thing is that the sport of war spends a lot of time talking about, uh, the risks of losing once once violence stops. I'm again, I'm I'm paraphrasing. You want to do it without going
going to war. You know, you want the other side to submit to your overwhelming will, but you really don't want to start combat because then you don't really know how that's going to end. And that's what they'd like. That's why they've got the you know, they use their money, they try to use their influence Confucius institutes, you know, and Belton Rode in it
and initiative. You know, there's a I read this assessment of China about ten years ago, and the author was comparing Chinese policy to the game of go, where you're just trying to surround you know, your opponent, your
opponent. And as a matter of fact, there's a Chinese admiral I wrote a column about this, I think in twenty fifteen, who talked about their cabbage strategy in the South China Sea, which is the kind of come in and then you know, they have one thing here, but then slowly something they want they surround with leaves of cabbage, you know, is the way he put it. But I've heard it expressed in other uh, in other
ways as well. I didn't do a good job of describing what the admiral said, but you get the point of what he was saying that they were trying to do. Uh. This is a sidebar, but it'll go right back into answering your question. I think one of the things that Chinese want ultimately is control of the Straits of Malacca, which means Singapore. And that's if you look at the artificial islands going down in the South China Sea.
They're they're they're like a very slow concrete fist aimed at Singapore. They are, and they're trying to, you know, lay claim to the their nine dash line, except now they have a ten dash line because they've on their latest map, they've got a dash of China that's to the east of Taiwan, you know, so it's it's now ten dash ten dash line. Do I think China would attack Taiwan, Yes, I think communists China would in the right circumstances where they think they've got an easy, an easy grab.
Of course, what the Ukrainians did to the Russians, where the Russians were expected suddenly, Oh maybe not. Taiwan has let some of its own local defenses UH degrade. But I've been on to Taiwan and I've seen some some of these bunkers, and I drove past this airfield they have on the eastern side of the island. That's just like these airfields that Switzerland has up in
the Alps. They're always cut back into a mountain and then F sixteen's come out and take off on the on the super Highway, just like the Swiss have it. They have their ways to destroy anything. But it's Taiwan is a big, huge rock that UH seen this several times. As a matter of fact, I think one of these maps was published within the last couple
of years on on one of the UH military news sides. It's they've really only got two, maybe three beaches that you could use for an amphibious assault because you you, yeah, you could have small uh small packets of soldiers coming in on amphibs, and you can certainly have air mobile and an airborne, but a huge you know, D Day type or US going after Ojima. That's they're just a handful of those of those beaches uh ones in the south, and I think two of them are in the north. I'm doing
this from memory. Don't don't hold uh hold me uh hold me to it. But one of the things that they're they've done is they have all these dredges come out and tear up the fishing grounds around Matsu, you know, those islands that are northwest of Taiwan that are uh Republic of China like this, And that's that's another example of isolating as well as probing and threatening uh Taiwan's uh uh sovereignty. They definitely want to want to see if they can
shake up Taiwan psychologically. But would they move if the United States was bogged down someplace else. They've certainly built naval forces that will vastly outnumber what the US Navy and our allies could put into the area quickly. Are there ships as high a quality as the ships in the US Navy, the Australian, the Japanese Navy. I don't think they are no, but they're good enough,
and they're certainly trying to train their crews to it. They still have aspects of what's called a bastion fleet for the Chinese coast, with all of its missiles and the light can provide them with some degree of air defense but also battle support. And they've got their so called carrier killer ballistic missiles that are designed to keep our battle groups in the Eastern Pacific around Hawaii or even east of Hawaii until we've quhittled down or destroyed those missiles. I don't know
how long it would take to do that. I do know that the Chinese are terribly worried about air delivered mines and submarine delivered mines because you could pin them up against their coast with all these mines. And the Japanese are very much into that as a defensive measure. And you can be fifty two's and b ones can deliver slews of the sea mins, but you've got to be ready to do it, and you've got to make sure that your b ones
and b fifty two's aren't committed to somewhere else in the Middle East. Yeah, because if you're going to try to if you're going to try to hold them up against the coast, you've got to start that operation immediately when they make they make the move. Uh. But would they do it, you have to be prepared for them to do it, and that actually as a deterrence forward. I'll throw in something that I've been on advocating now for some time. We need some and there have been a couple of war games that
run by CSI, s UH and the like. There is a good study that was published I think uh it was I think last year. But uh, we need some smaller stealthy warships that you can build quickly, and I know of one that and I've written about it in a couple of places. In other words, but it doesn't take all that many men capable of caring. Uh. Uh I should say sailors. I'm sorry, it doesn't take
all that many sailors. If I say men, I'm a uh. The uh you can some of fire missiles that the Army and Navy are both developing. Are these hypersonic missiles in the can are so powerful that you can put them on a smaller ship and still give yourself more platforms that could not only take on Chinese warships but also suppress the Chinese batteries land based batteries, and you're not putting the carriers to risk there. And you can also build them
fast. I'm not sure how quickly, but probably they'd be able to have a little fleet of these things within twelve to fourteen months of starting them up. The problem you'd have is training the sailors to fight them and also educating the officers, and I wouldn't just the navy, because it would be the joint joint force how to use the platforms against Chinese. You think of them as pet boats, but their missile, you know, multiple multi but and
some of them have one I'm thinking of has has long legs. I mean it's it has a range, so it's not short range like a pet boat. These but are unfortunately our Department of Defense is we're we're into just big ships. And yet you have these voices all over the place, including the C S I S study and another study I'm aware of that the Australians carried out. And then you know my own own opinion, but it's you know,
across there saying wait a minute, we need these. We've got some of the yards that build you know, like offshore supply uh ships uh for the operating the Gulf of Mexico like that they could manufacture these things. Uh yeah, would it deter China? It might? It might because they wouldn't have the whole advantage, and they'd also know how dangerous these things are. So yeah, all right, Well, let's let's get out for today. Uh with one of those dumb old TV talk show type questions, But it's
a way of summarizing your your general mood. I guess i'd say so on a scale of one to ten, ten being worse. How worried are you about America's strategic position in the world outlook today? Oh man, I'll tell you a questions. I'll tell you what. I am very worried about our leadership class. All right, Yes, that's that's mine. That's my worry
here. We have enough retained defense capabilities and existing defense capabilities, and enough quality overall throughout our military forces to be able to handle and watch how I'm going to say this A big one. I don't know that we can handle two big ones and essentially two big ones. We've handled two big ones in World War Two when we were fighting on the Pacific and fighting the Atlantic in
Europe. As some of this goes back to nineteen ninety and the so called peace dividend, and then we were going to fight one big one and hold elsewhere, fight one and hold and then come when the other one. I don't think we have the time to do that, and China's too large an
adversary. Uh. But our leadership class started out talking about how slow Biden was, how tentative, how mismanaged the Afghanistan withdrawal, mismanaged a disaster absolutely dificult, and arguably Putin wouldn't have tried to up his super blitz of the Ukraine if if he didn't see how weak the Biden administration was on managing a real military operation. I think it encouraged Iran immensely, and heavens were seeing some of the weapons that the Taliban took come back filter in through Iran.
I've seen that in four or five places that it's turned up. In fact, as there was a hall the US Navy ship caught an Iranian ship smuggling arms to the hoodies and the there was there was some light weapons in there that were traceable back to UH stocks in Afghanistan. At least that's the allegation
that was in the in the article. I know they're out there, and I know the Taliban Taliban got some absolutely fabulous US weapons, but UH leadership class and yes, I mean dieting a large portion of the Democrat Party here, but you have Republicans to who are on this about I don't want to fund Ukraine. It's all corrupt, can't win and you know, you know all that's oy. Uh. Do you want the Russians to push into Poland after they gobble up Ukraine? You know, what do you think about that?
Oh? And then you get back to certain kinds of UH. And this is predominantly in the Republican Party is we don't need NATO anymore. You don't. That's the world's that's the most successful military alliance and the history of
the world for a lot of things. You know, now, I've got doubts about Air Towan in Turkey, but Turkey benefits from NATO, and the Turks know it, and even Airdwan knows it because twice in twenty twelve, I think it was he said he was going to invoke NATO Article five because of shots coming over the border from Syria, and it was, you know, it wasn't stop it. You know, suddenly now you're at war with the United States in Germany and everybody else. It's not just you know,
Turkey here, even though it was stupid that the Assyrians would do. The other Turks have a very fine military establishment. But it's we have this, we have. We've also lost a since in this country of the and I blame the cancel culture that comes out of the campus and also a media that you can't have an adult conversation on a very difficult subjects without being called you know this all one word here, steve racist racist, racist, that's all
one word, or such and such a sex. And I've used this in columns sometimes there it is and then whatever little cussword you know those are. But if you come back and say something, oh, microaggression, you hurt my feelings. Well, you know, there's this country's got a lot of growing up to do. So I think I've laid that out. I'm at a seven. I'll say I'm at a seven, which for somebody like me, because I'm if you'd ask me this question in two thousand and eight,
even twenty ten, my level of worry would have been about two. You know, that's right, that's right. But uh I also you know there it would have improved. But the Biden administration is really one of the most miserably bad in American history when it comes to foreign policy. And y yeah, you know there's somebody on instapondent was saying that and maybe maybe they were quote you you know what I mean. I saw that and I laughed and
I thought, no, Austin, that's not funny. That's because what happened when Carter got so bad besides the shaw uh uh uh following the Russians invader Defghalistown, which for them but turned into too a disaster. But they thought, hey, we got an easy one now see uh the U. But how we've got to be a well to debate difficult policy issues without ad hominem attack and also crediting there's some you know, I'm sorry. The world really
isn't divided between oppressors and the oppressed and author It's not. It doesn't. It doesn't come clean like that because I can show you in every single country on this planet oppressors and oppressed that are local. And that's one of the things I've I want to get to talking about Africa. I've had the quality experience in East Africa and I've covered Congo and Central Africa for Strategy Page for over twenty years, you know, doing updates seven or eight times a year,
but detailed updates on it. And I'm sorry some of the situations in those countries, they were not caused by colonialism. They're caused by tribalism there. In many cases they're exacerbated because of phony porters. But that's not the only thing going on there. They're local bad actors of the of the worst worst sort end up enslaving their own people. And I'm using that enslaving may
not be by name slavery, but that's essentially what happens. But if you start talking about this, uh, you're you're you're called well, you have a colonial mentality, I do, I do. You don't know me very well, but uh, that's that's what you get because they don't want to deal with hard, discrete facts, and the discrete facts in so many cases in the developing world fly in the face of their theory. The discrete facts are very difficult. But the thing is that in the end, reality wins.
You see right, there's an old saying attributed to Hegel that when theory and facts disagree so much, the worse for the facts. And that's certainly the world we live in. I'm in I'm in hinding agreement with you about the how bad our leadership class is. Uh But Austin, we're gonna have to leave it there for today. But thanks for joining me, and I will encourage listeners and power line readers to keep following you on strategy page and
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