Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. She writes for Bloomberg Opinion one of our most effective and popular essays out there. Just does it every single day is a not an acquaintance with Carlisle with a Rockefeller Foundation, but mostly what he does is sit at home and write books. Yep, five hundred thousand copies have been sold so far. His Leader's Bookshelf, which I'll feature on Twitter and LinkedIn here, is the must read for your board college brat at
home this summer. But joining us to celebrate the third edition here twenty eighty four is James travenas Admiral. Thank you so much for joining us.
Good to be bored, Tom, you got.
Three books out, You're like You, John mccaay or Neville Shoot You, and Elliot Ackerman two and thirty four is truly one of the most frightening books I've ever read, where China and the US go to war, and then there's two thousand and fifty four, and in two thousand and eighty four it's a whole new world after all? Is that where we're heading? Given our military politics of twenty twenty six.
We ought to be very worried that we are and that's exactly the point of all three books, Tom is to go to the public and say, look, there are big challenges ahead of us great power war with China. Twenty fifty four is about artificial intelligence. Twenty eighty four is about conflict towards the end of the century. Look, we still have time to reverse engineer this and avoid it. But the idea is to launch a cautionary tale in these three books as we.
Launch this weekend. Like you pick up your cell phone, Ed, I can't imagine what it's like for you with your contexts. The USS Tripoli is in harms way. How is our navy doing.
I think we're doing except only well. And here I mean not only the amphibious ships with the Marines, but more importantly in this conflict, the aircraft carriers, each one of them eighty combat aircraft. We don't need anybody's permission to operate them. We're knocking down the enemy targets. That's the good news. The bad news is we have not made a great deal of strategic progress yet. But certainly our navy is doing its job and doing it well.
Admirle, you know a thing or two about securing the safe passage of the high seas. Will the straight up removes ever be open like it was three months ago?
I think it will be because it must be. And that sounds like a tautology, but it's true. We cannot we the world, we the global economy, we the United States and our allies. We can't simply turn this thing over to the Iranians and have them charge as an I toll. No way. We have to fight to open it. If we do, and if we can accomplish it diplomatically putting economic pressure, fine, but yes, that straight will be open. Final thought. I've sailed that straight close to one hundred
times in command and as a junior officer. It's tough navigation when you're before you get into drones attacking you in see minds. So there's going to be a lot of work to do to get it open, but it has to be open.
Yeah, Admiral, I mean, I think I speak for most just lay people. We didn't realize how narrow that straight is. And you see some of the footage. I don't know how you people put those big ships through there, but and much less the big oil tankers. But it seems like anybody with a Boston weller or an RPG can shut down that.
Straight indeed, and so it requires real effort militarily to maintain it as an open sea way. And I think we're going to have to push our European colleagues to come throw in with us. We're not asking them to drop bombs or kyron, but they can participate with us in reopening and keeping the Straight open.
A most vitus with us. Course. His work at CNN is noted writing for Bloomberg Opinion twenty eighty four, as the book were celebrating, I'm going to give you a pro tip. Folks, read two thousand and thirty four, Read two thousand and fifty four, then read twenty and eighty four. It reads like JOHNA. Corray. So there's a memo here on page one away to Admiral from the Republic of Greenland. Juliet had alerted her colleagues at the UN the Chinese
fleet was descending the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Okay, that's the fear that's out there, and the cacophony of the Trump Pentagon is your What is your contact at the Pentagon say about a military that can run business as usual?
Highly difficult, very very challenging. But oh, by the way, in the book twenty eighty four, the Free Republic of Florida broken away from the United States, is involved, and you'll be pieced.
That's with President J. Griffin, right.
Yeah, And don't forget there's Camp Is Santis where the forces are operating from in twenty eighty four, but in the Pentagon today, I'll take you back where we started. The conversation. Is our navy ready to fight? Are they fighting our air force or marines?
Yes?
The question is can we get diplomacy and economics affixed to those military capabilities. If we can, we can solve this.
Ad multit extent. We want to solve this. How do you what form do you think that takes here? Because I'm not sure some of the major objectives have been achieved. I either the regime is still there or the ranium still there. There's if you don't have rockets today, you can make them in a year or so. I don't know where do we go.
Two point piece plan number one open the stray eight Number two provide some level of economic relief to Iran. That's something for both sides. Put the nuclear discussion in a sidecar to be negotiated in the future. And then here's the key point. Over time two to three years, we help build a resistance inside Iran like we've built the French resistance in World War Two. That's how the regime falls, not because of bombing. What is it?
And I go back edmyl to your service in Brussels at NATO. What is the thing about Iran we most get wrong? Vali Nasser has that wonderful one volume out on the history of Iran through nineteen seventy nine and all the war, the horrific Iraq Iranian War. What's the thing we get most wrong about our study of Iran, Admiral.
We don't understand how they see themselves, and we think of them as this kind of annoying, mid sized power in the Middle East. That's not how they see themselves, tom They see themselves as the inheritors of the Persian Empire from two thousand, five hundred years ago. They truly believe in that kind of destiny. And I say this as a proud Greek American. It was only the Greeks who finally stopped them at the edge of Europe two
thousand years ago. That's the mental map they hold and until we understand that, we are going to have a great deal of difficulty dealing with them.
In your study of Greece within the Leader's bookshelf is absolutely extraordinary. But one final question, if I can this Navy needs to heal after President Trump in some way. How does that happen the day after whatever the next inauguration is? How does a Navy? How does a Pentagon move on after President Trump?
Here's the good news. Our military over centuries early has had dissonance with its political leadership. But the qualities of our armed forces, honor, courage, commitment, they transcend the day to day politics. I'm very confident that our Navy and our other services will hue to their professionalism and move on to the next administration.
This reshort wonderful, incredibly difficult fictions by Ackerman and Stravenas two thousand and thirty four, fifty four and just out this week two thousand and eighty four as well. I can't say enough about the Shock. It was my book of the summer a number of summers ago, two thousand and thirty four and Ackerman Instruvitis Do It Again, two thousand and eighty four. Whatever your politics, just read it. What did you say in the Republic of Florida.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That makes sense too, I guess. So we'll have to see James Travenas. Thank you so much, abrastravitis er.