Hegseth's Pentagon Moves Spark Backlash

I think the Israelis do bear a lot of the onus for the difficulty that they find themselves in, both, uh, in terms of planning and in terms of popular perception, which has been catastrophic for them.

Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by The Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. I'm Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, non-resident fellow at the Miller Center, and a Bulwark contributor. And I'm joined by my partner in all things strategy, Elliot Cohen, professor emeritus of strategy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. Elliot, how are you this fine, sultry summer day?

I was going to say it's horrible out there. You know, it was about 100 degrees, last time I checked. Uh, I'm doing fine. Um, as always, you know, I, uh, I have to confess, I always had this anxiety since we introduced this jackassery of the week that we would run out of material. You know, I, the penalty of doing a weekly show, but no, uh, that, that turns out not to be the case. And as has so often been true in the past, um, Secretary of Defense Pete Hexath is really the gift that keeps on giving. So, the, the latest thing is this, the Pentagon suspending participation in think tank events unless you've been cleared. Now, there's ambiguity about what, what this really means. Um, for sure, though, if you're going to deliver remarks or something, it has to be cleared personally. I think either by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy or the General Counsel or, you know, some other, uh, political com, very, very senior political commisar, who actually has other things to do. Um, and this is all part of, uh, we, we hate the globalist establishment. If you may remember, Hexath referred, or his spokesman referred to, uh, the Aspen Security Group as a bunch of evil, uh, globalists. Um, it's of a piece with, uh, Hexath apparently having been told to knock off polygraphing his support. You know, it, it, of course, it's appalling that you have, um, this knucklehead Secretary of Defense who's clearly way, way, way over his head. But there is something, uh, appallingly comic about it, I'm afraid. But maybe I'm just not being serious.

No, I mean, you know, I hate to keep picking on him, but as you say, he is the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, on a more serious note, I mean, everything you said, of course, is, is true and it, you know, is indicative of, you know, a kind of lack of, of seriousness. I mean, first of all, on the, you know, keeping military officers out of think tank events. Um, you and I know how easy it is in the government, and I did two tours in the Pentagon, to get completely wrapped up in, you know, inside baseball and, uh, you know, not allowing, you know, officers or civilians in the Pentagon to get an outside perspective is just incredibly silly and very, you know, damaging and intellectually limiting. But, but even, you know, on a more serious note, you know, there was a story in the paper yesterday, I think it was in The Post yesterday, about the degree to which he continues to be, you know, at sixes and sevens with the flag officers and his refusal to promote, uh, General Douglas Sims, the Director of the Joint Staff, uh, at first allegedly because he thought he was a leaker and then he was cleared of that, um, and then it turned out to be he was too close to General Millie, who of course had been his superior officer. I mean, it's just ridiculous. And the, um, refusal to promote Rear Admiral Michael Donnelly, uh, and make him commander of the Seventh, uh, Fleet, um, because at one point when he was, uh, commander of the Ronald Reagan and it crossed the equator, they had a quote drag show, which, as you know, is a, a tradition in, in the Navy, not just the US Navy, but the British Navy going back hundreds of years.

Yeah. Well, you should, if nothing else, you should watch the, uh, uh, musical South Pacific, right? From World War II, right? Where they're, they're guys dancing with a pair of coconuts on their chest.

No, I mean, this, this, it is truly juvenile. I suspect it's not just Hexath, but some of the people around him. You know, our, our dear old friend and boss, Al Bernstein, always said, "First-rate people hire second-rate people. Second-rate people hire third-rate people. Third-rate people hire nuts." And I think that's part of what's happened here is that some of the people, um, some of his aides are really, you know, completely nuts. I, I also, um, you know, there, I mean, it ultimately does point to something quite serious. I mean, God, first, God help us if we get into a serious crisis. Secondly, from everything I've heard, the antipathy between the general officer corps and the secretary is profound. I mean, they really dislike and mistrust this guy. I mean, they will dutifully follow orders and keep it to themselves and so forth, but, but I'm sure he can sense, uh, he can sense that. And because I think he's fundamentally a weak character, that'll make him more paranoid, make him do more crazy things. So, it's, it's this is very bad. I mean, I, I don't think he's going to break the general officer corps at all, actually. Maybe the other way around. Uh, but, but it's, it's terrible to have this level of tension and suspicion and hostility.

The, the one very faint ray of sunshine, and as you know, I am, I am always looking for the sunny side, is the White House apparently told him to knock off polygraphing your subordinates. Um, and actually, if I could just indulge in a partial rant on that one. The polygraph is an awful instrument. I, this is based, it's not based on actual science. Um, it is 1920s technology. It does not detect lies. It may detect certain kinds of stress among certain kinds of people. Uh, partly depending on your cultural background. It can be beaten. It's damaged a lot of careers. It's basically a tool of intimidation for an interrogator and, and it is demeaning as well as useless to, um, to begin using this on your subordinates. And, you know, the, the kind of mistrust that that radiates, this just poisonous to leadership. I mean, there's a reason why this guy couldn't get beyond major. I mean, I'm almost beginning to think it's miraculous that Hexath got up to the level of captain. It's probably because we were desperate at the time. But it's, he's a just an awful leader. And I, like I said, the faint ray of sunshine in this is if the White House, you know, is finally going to lose patience with him and put in somebody who's, who's at least marginally better.

Yeah. On the polygraph, as I recall, the late Senator Sam Irvin referred to it as "20th century witchcraft." And, and, you know, we're now in the 21st century. Um, I, I seem to also recall, correct me if I get this wrong, but I believe, uh, Rick Ames, Aldrich Ames, one of the biggest traitors in the history of the CIA, beat the polygraph multiple times. Um, and so, yeah, I, I quite agree with you. I mean, on a lighter note, um, in terms of jackassery, you know, one, one of the less bright lights in the U.S. House of Representatives has attached an amendment to rename the opera house at the Kennedy Center after the first lady, Melania Trump. And not to be outdone, not to be outdone, there's now an amendment to strip the Kennedy Center of, uh, the John F. Kennedy name to rename it the Donald Trump Center for the Performing Arts. You know, but it's not a cult. It's not a cult. To see ourselves as, as others see us. It, uh, I will just look back at this and and go, I think, um, although it's, it's, it's appalling, I don't think we've ever had a Congress composed of so many really petty, sycophantic, useless people.

Yeah, it's, it's that. Anyway, that's a depressing subject. Um, but, you know, again, looking for the positive. Um, the president did reverse himself, or not reverse himself, he reversed the Pentagon's decision to cut off aid to Ukraine. So, aid to Ukraine is still flowing. And the president still appears to be, um, uh, losing patience, you know, over a very long period of time with Vladimir Putin. And he's now revised his 50-day, um, you know, uh, ultimatum, you know, that he would decide what to do in 50 days. He's now shortening, shortening it down to 10 to 12 days. And, um, Dimitri Medvedev, former president of Russia, you know, awoke from a drunken stupor and tweeted that, or on Telegram, wrote that this was going to increase the chances of a war between the United States and, and Russia, and encouraging President Trump not to go down the road of sleepy Joe Biden, as he said. So, um, what, what's your take on all that?

Uh, well, being a former, uh, professor, my, my immediate reaction is, I told you so. Uh, and, uh, indeed I did, actually. I had a, a piece in The Atlantic, uh, last week, which was really gently, um, but firmly disagreeing with friends of ours who think that, you know, Trump has decided to align the United States with Russia, that he simply loathes Ukraine and is acting as a Russian agent in, in some way. And I said, you know, as, as I personally find him loathsome, that, that, but, but you also have to just respect what the facts are. And the facts are, it's not the way he's behaved. And in fact, with the way I, the way I would interpret, you know, this latest thing is this is one more kind of signpost that he's, um, he's lost patience with Putin. Now, that's taken a long time. And I think he started from a position of, uh, misplaced empathy, let's put it that way, that, you know, "Putin's a tough guy, I'm a tough,", uh, kind of thing. But I think that has eroded over time as he, as a number of things have happened. One is, uh, you know, I think he's seen that Putin is not interested in a deal, and, and Trump does want to have a, a deal. I think he, he probably resents being played and realizes, although he could never quite admit as much, that he's been played. I think he genuinely does not like the destruction that's being levied on Ukrainian cities. Um, I think he probably was impressed by the cyber attack, that, you know, quite daring attack that the Ukrainians launched. I think he's quite open to, I think he's been actually handled very well by the Europeans. Uh, you know, as somebody said, if anybody who says "flattery will get you nowhere" has clearly never been flattered. Um, you know, Mark Ruder, uh, all credit to him. They, you know, it's, I'm sure hard to look at themselves in the mirror after doing it, but, but, you know, they think they did well, and I think they've cut a good deal. Uh, so, okay, the, uh, the Europeans will be buying lots of American hardware. So, I think it's moving more or less in the right direction. And, you know, the, the other tell in this, of course, is personnel, because, as we both know, personnel is policy. So Steve Whit, who was really naive in dealing with the Russians, has been sidelined, it looks like, and it's Marco Rubio and Keith Kellogg, both of whom are much more sympathetic to Ukraine. So, you know, on the whole, I think it, it's good.

I, I guess I have two large points, and then I'd like to hear what you have to say. One is, it doesn't resolve the fundamental issue, which is how, how does this thing end or terminate? And as we've discussed often, the problem is defense is kind of a mug's game. And the Russians, uh, increasingly being able to tap, uh, Chinese industrial support, North Korean industrial support, maybe Iranian, I'm less sure about, um, can swamp Ukrainian defenses. And so the question is not just giving the Ukrainians defensive weapons, but are there, is there something that will kind of coerce the Russians to the table? Maybe we just have to wait as, as pressures develop. But, you know, it does sort of beg the question a bit. But I think there's a broader issue here, which I'm very interested in, which we may be able to explore in, in, uh, later on in a different venue. And that is the problem that, uh, those of us in the policy world, either as commentators or observers or experts, and certainly as participants, have in dealing with cognitive dissonance, where, you know, you've got to believe two opposite things at the same time. And I, I think, you know, that really has led a lot of people to misinterpret what Trump has done. I think it's led them to misinterpret some of what Netanyahu has done. Um, and it really gets in the way, and you really have to, you have to wrestle with it, because, you know, politics is, among other things, the realm of emotions, and your emotions can get control of your analysis. And I think you have to fight it.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it was Emerson who said, "The mark of intelligence was being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time." Um, I mean, I largely agree with, with your assessment. I mean, I, I do think, as I've said before on, on the show, that I think Trump does want to normalize relations with Russia, and I think he thinks there's some big business deals to be done, which I think is also, you know, illusory, you know, an illusion. Um, and I think, as you were saying a moment ago, Steve Whit was particularly coming from the same kind of background as Trump, uh, you know, you know, equally, if not more susceptible because he knows even less, um, to that kind of blandishment, um, from the Russians. Um, and I do think Trump is, I mean, I think a lot of people have told him, people whom he respects and whose views he takes seriously, that he is being played by, by Putin. And the, um, upsurge in attacks after each phone call with Putin could, you know, can't have escaped his attention. So, I, I think that's, that's all, you know, all true. I, I, by the same token, you know, he still is very reluctant to pull the trigger on sanctions. I mean, I, I think the 10 to 12 day now instead of 50-day deadline, I, I think tells you, in my view, two things. One, he understands that the 50-day deadline was probably a mistake because it kind of gave the Russians a long opportunity to beat the crap out of, you know, Ukrainian cities, which is what they were doing. But it also tells you he still doesn't want to pull the trigger on the sanctions bill, you know, which is sitting up there. And that, look, the bill has got all sorts of flaws. Um, but, you know, I think in addition to sort of offensive strike weapons, which I think the Ukrainians do need in order to bring, uh, the war home to, uh, Russia and Russians, uh, even more than they already have. I mean, they have created a lot of havoc with, um, with both, uh, trains and, and planes in, in Russia. So, there has been a certain amount of that. They need to be able to do more. But the Russian economy still is, you know, Putin's Achilles' heel, I think. And, and ramping up the pressures economically are clearly going to have to be part of what, uh, ultimately convinces him that he's not going to be able to get what he wants. And the other element, which Trump has been a little bit better about this time around than last time, is that as long as Putin nurses the hope that he can split the Americans and the Europeans, you know, he, he'll be inclined to continue. And so, I, I agree with you. I think Ruder, um, as distasteful as it may have been to see his, you know, groveling, sucking up to Trump, you know, at least kept the NATO summit from, you know, displaying a lot of division. Uh, and that's, you know, that's, I think all to the good.

You know, I, I think we also have to be willing to accept that there's been change. Not completely. I mean, you know, Trump is still who he is. When the first one, you know, there was a serious danger that he was going to try to pull us out of NATO, which he didn't understand and all that. And in this one, he came away, you know, yes, they tailored the summit so that there wouldn't be anything controversial, but, but the mood music was fine. And I think, you know, from his point of view, and not entirely incorrectly, it was a success. What is, what's the nature of his success? Well, he's bullied the Europeans into accepting these large, kind of targeted defense spending. Okay? Will they hit 5% of GDP? No, of course they won't. Have they increased their defense spending in part as a result of his behavior and his threats? I think so. I mean, it worked.

Not just him, though. I think, in fairness, it's also a growing appreciation of the Russian threat.

Oh, unquestionably, but I think fear of American abandonment and fear of Trump played a role, too. I mean, I, I hate that. I wish it weren't the case, but I think it probably did, um, play some sort of role. I think he sees now more positives in that, well, this is a great market for U.S. arms and for building up the defense industrial base. And true enough, um, and if the Europeans, the Europe, look, the Europeans do have the resources to, to do this. This is a war that's happening on their continent. I mean, it's not entirely crazy, I think. I mean, it's not generous. Um, and then I think, you know, he, there may even be this, I'm not sure of, but I think it's possible that this is going on, too, an awareness that with, with Ukraine, you really have the opportunity to develop some of the cutting-edge tech defense military technologies that we can use as well. And I just saw, just before I got on, I, I don't know if this is true or not, that there's a deal with a German-American drone manufacturer that's, uh, going to be giving, selling, giving tens, tens of thousands of AI-powered drones, um, to the Ukrainians. This was just cleared by the Defense Department. You know, I, I think there's, an awareness that this is a lot of the new modes of warfare are being kind of tested out on the ground in, in Ukraine, and that there's, there's something for us there as well.

So, and, and I guess the very last thing I'll say is, uh, we've been beating up on poor Pete Hexath quite a bit. I get the sense he's, he's not nearly as bad on Ukraine as Bridget K. By is, his the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, your, your old job, who's just kind of monomaniacal about the Indo-Pacific and about China, and who seems to have been responsible for this foolish suspension of aid and then kind of waking up and being told by the White House, "No, you're not."

Yeah. I, I mean, my sense is both of them are kind of, kind of in a doghouse with people at the White House, with the possible exception of the Vice President's office. Um, the Vice President, I think, shares Bridget's concerns about Ukraine. Not sure how much he shares the view about prioritizing the Indo-Pacific, because I think he may be more of a, you know, a, a true isolationist, you know, in the class. I'm not, I'm not sure he has any convictions whatsoever, but that's also a possibility. May, maybe I'm, maybe I'm misjudging, you know, him, but he, he really has been such a shape-shifter that.

Yeah. No, I, I agree. And for an isolationist to go spend your summer vacation in the Cotswolds, which is really high-snoot English upper crust.

Well, there, I have to, you know, I do have to push back. Don't forget that Charles Lindbergh decamped to, to the United Kingdom for several years, um, you know, and, and was so, I mean, you could be an isolationist and still be an Anglophile, a Nazi sympathizer. I mean, right? This is, if that's the defense, then boy, you're in trouble. And I, let me stipulate, my wife and I went on a walking holiday in the Cotswolds, but we weren't hanging around with no, no fancy pants aristocrats. We were just slogging through the mud.

Yeah, there you go. Um, well, let's move to another topic that, um, where Trump's views may be evolving, as we like to say in Washington, um, which is, uh, Gaza and what's going on in Gaza. President, uh, in his meeting with Prime Minister Kier Starmer, said when being asked questions that he absolutely thinks starvation is taking place in, uh, in Gaza. And certainly from the, um, all the press accounts that one sees in the major mainstream U.S. press, uh, one would be led to believe that this is, I think, a very complicated story. That, um, it has been made more complicated, I think, unfortunately, by some of the things Israel has done, um, that has, uh, opened it up to some criticism, very well-deserved, some not so deserved. But you want to talk about that? I mean, there was, you pointed out to me this morning, the very interesting and I would say very complex piece by Matti Friedman, the Israeli journalist, in The Free Press, about precisely this subject.

Yeah. So Matti Friedman, who's a very good journalist, not a friend of the Israeli government by a long shot, um, had a very interesting piece in The Free Press, and he made a number of points. One of which is, it's really hard to figure out exactly what's going on where. And, you know, you should, you know, when it's your turn, you should talk a little bit about your view of American journalism covering this. Truth is, it's very hard. It's, it's very hard to figure out. Um, you know, undoubtedly, there's a huge amount of human suffering. There's no question about that. I mean, that's, uh, uh, unquestionable. There are a number of things that are, are however striking about it. One is, there's nobody who's saying, well, this is really the fault of Hamas, if they, you know, surrendered and accepted exile, not, you know, not firing squads but exile, um, and handed over the hostages that they seized, this would all be over. Um, so, first, nobody seems to talk about that, um, in the slightest. There are, you know, innate contradictions between what are sometimes being asked of the Israelis. We want you to protect, um, the distribution of, uh, humanitarian aid, but we don't want you there. We don't want to be associated with you. So, you know, which, which is it? But I will say, and here I will be, uh, to be the harshest things one can say about the Israeli government, which I will say, is first, and this is just a deep-seated Israeli problem, and it was obvious to me even when I visited Israel a couple months after the October 7th, '23, uh, massacres, that there was really no strategic planning for, okay, what happens after the initial campaigns, however they, however many months they pass? That, it just, there just wasn't anything. And it's, you know, kind of a commonplace, but it's absolutely true that the Israelis are brilliant tactically and operationally, and then strategically, there's a vacuum. Now, there are various reasons for that, which we can go into if you like. Uh, but it, it's absolutely, I think, the case here that you just don't have a sense of, you know, strategic thinking. And a very bright former Israeli, uh, colonel who was a, uh, one of their strategic planners once said, you know, "It's no accident that we can, we Israelis can only speak about strategy in English." He said to me, and, you know, I think that that registers. So that's one thing.

The other thing, though, is there is something sinister about, uh, the current leadership of the Israeli government. And here again, let me tap into that cognitive dissonance thing. I think on the one hand, you know, my view of what, uh, the Netanyahu and his government did vis-à-vis Iran was rational. Um, it may not have been decisive. I'm not sure what could be decisive, but it was measured. It was appropriate. It was strategic in some sense. This, I, I have to say, I think is driven by domestic politics of a, of a pretty sordid kind. And the basic issue, as I, I think our listeners will know, is, you know, undoubtedly when this government comes to an end, however it comes to an end, there will be a state commission of inquiry, and, you know, Netanyahu will most definitely be in the dock, and should be in the dock for, you know, setting the conditions that led to October 7th. Secondly, he's, um, he fears that deeply. He's been sort of blackmailed by the really awful hardline right-wingers, um, uh, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who really are kind of racists and and fanatics, who've threatened to leave the coalition, which would bring it down, if he accepted a deal. And, and Netanyahu bowed to that. So, I think that the war is being continued for sordid, uh, domestic considerations. Most Israelis think that too, if you believe the polls, which I do. Uh, there's clearly anger about this at high levels in the military, certainly among families, reservists, and so forth. But I think that's, that's the unfortunate truth. Last thing I'll say is, um, our old colleague David Satterfield, who's served many, many roles in the Middle East, who I think is a pretty level-headed, um, there was an interview with him, and he said, "Look, there's really only one solution, which is, you've got to just flood Gaza with humanitarian relief. That's, that's what you do now." And I think he's absolutely right. That's the, that is the only thing that you can do now. By the way, that begs the question of, you know, what are you going to do later on for shelter? What are you going to do, uh, when the winter comes? What are you going to do, you know, eventually for jobs and stuff like that? All of which again, is there just is no thinking about that I, I can detect.

I mean, you know, this does become a very emotional discussion, you know, and people start throwing words like "genocide" around. And not just people, by the way, who are inveterate, um, you know, enemies of, of Israel or anti-Semites. I mean, Omer Bartov, uh, the, uh, very, you know,

I have a darker view of Omer Bartov, but go ahead.

Well, I mean, he is, you know, a renowned scholar of the Holocaust and of the German military during World War II. Um, he had a piece in The New York Times. I don't agree with it, but he did, you know, say that this is tantamount to genocide. But you've also got Israeli groups at home saying now, throwing the genocide, you know, word. We're, were Iran to look to put this in the best context for the Israelis, they went to war with a, um, terrorist organization that, you know, uses, uh, civilians as human shields, and which, you know, builds tunnels under hospitals and does everything it can to make, um, to increase the chances that there will be collateral damage if and when they are hit by the Israelis militarily. Um, knowing that, I think the Israelis have tried pretty hard, uh, to, you know, minimize collateral damage. And, you know, you, on the one hand, you can say that 50,000 people have been killed, uh, you know, out of a population of almost 2 million. Uh, that's a lot. But, you know, it's not clear those numbers are accurate. Those numbers don't take into account the number of fighters who've actually been killed, combatants as opposed to non-combatants. But as you said, there's no gains in the fact that there's enormous human suffering going on. And the Israelis have compounded their own problems, you know, on at multiple points. I mean, you've made the point about the lack of a strategy or planning for the day after. Um, they also have, um, taken some steps which I think are understandable, uh, in setting up this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to provide the, um, assistance, but they've woefully under-resourced it and almost designed it in a way that would guarantee failure. Um, and you're seeing the results of, of that now. Um, you particularly in light of the fact that you've got ministers of the government, you know, calling for the expulsion of the population of Gaza, calling for them to be starved, and then you don't let independent press in. You know, it's just inevitable that you're going to get what you've gotten. And, and I think the Israelis do bear a lot of the onus for the difficulty that they find themselves in, both, uh, in terms of planning and in terms of popular perception, which has been catastrophic for them. It's catastrophic not just, it's catastrophic because of, you know, countries like France and the UK being alienated. It's catastrophic because of what it's doing to popular support for Israel in this country, uh, including alienating Donald Trump, who's been willing to pretty much give them a blank check to do whatever the hell they wanted. And I think the long-term consequences of this for the state of Israel are going to be very bad, and, and, uh, are going to reverberate for a long time, unfortunately.

I, alas, I completely agree with that. I think the, the genocide thing, I, it drives me crazy. You know, genocide means you, you want to wipe out an entire people. If they really wanted to wipe out the population of Gaza, they would have done that by now. I mean, that, that's, um, uh, that's it. And so, I, I think it's, you know, it's an inflammatory word. It's an inaccurate word. The real, the realities are bad enough. You know, they, they faced a, a, a wicked problem in that, on the one hand, look, they couldn't trust UNRWA, uh, which was thoroughly penetrated by Hamas, which was had officials who were members of Hamas. Okay? So, they're, you know, they don't, they don't have other agencies they can work with. I think unlike us in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, because it's an incredibly hostile population, understandably, um, and vice versa. The Israelis can't go in and do it themselves, you know, and actually administer it. So, so who does it? I think the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was probably a good idea. They would have been wiser to begin standing that thing up way earlier. Um, all, all of this, I think, is part of the, I mean, it goes back to the astounding failure of October 7th, that, you know, they really didn't have a war plan for this kind of thing. You know, they had, um, tactical and operational plans for what were essentially raids into Gaza, but they didn't have a plan for, you know, what happens if we have to re-occupy the strip and really try to dig Hamas out. And Bibi had a track record of not wanting to do it. I mean, hope, hope, we hope in September to have Yakov Katz on, the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, and, uh, co-author of the book *While Israel Slept*, which will be appearing in September. And, you know, part of the point he makes in the, in the book is, Bibi all along never wanted to go back into Gaza, always restrained other people in the military who thought it might be necessary.

Yeah, this is part of the, by the way, the irony is that Bibi was always known to be cautious about the use of force. I mean, he has changed, and almost invariably for the worse. Um, but he always actually, you know, the rhetoric was always kind of tough guy talk, but actually, if you look at what he was willing to authorize, it was much more modest. Is one of the reasons I think why the attack on Iran was, um, as much of a surprise as it was to a lot of people.

No, but this is, this is, it's unquestionably a mess. It's, there's a large part of it which is of Israel's making. The largest part, we do have to remember, is Hamas's making.

Oh, I agree. Um, you, you had some thoughts, uh, when we were sitting in the green room before this, about, uh, American journalism, though, and international journalism. And, and I'll have one thought about, uh, uh, President Macron, but, but, but I think this is more important. You know, look, part of this, as I said, is that the Israelis have forbidden journalists to go into Gaza with, you know, not unlike us when we went into Iraq, where we embedded journalists with our troops so they could see exactly what was going on. The Israelis have kept journalists out, which means they're all forced to rely on, uh, stringers, uh, who are, uh, Gazans, and in some cases, you know, Hamas sympathizers. And, and so it was inevitable that they were going to get bad press, given, you know, how, how they've done that. There also is, you know, been, I think, a real breakdown in, in sort of, um, the quality of American journalism. That's not to say that there aren't some really first-rate, terrific, uh, American journalists, um, both military correspondents and others, but, you know, you see things like the picture that was shown of the, you know, uh, purported to be a starving child in Gaza who turns out to be a victim, tragically, of cerebral palsy, um, which explains some of, you know, the way the child looked. Um, and The Times just, you know, prints this, and the BBC just runs with this. Uh, there was the, um, last week, a, you know, New York Times reporter who kind of went into Kursk with the Chechen forces, who are some of the worst war criminals in the war in Ukraine, to, you know, document the terrible things Ukraine did when they were fighting in Kursk. I mean, this is just, you know, I think, you know, for a paper that bears the stigma of having had one of its, you know, most famous correspondents, Walter Duranty, in the 1930s, denying the reality of the starvation of Ukrainians, um, in the famine that was created by Stalin and the purges, you know, to not, you know, be putting a check on this kind of, I would say, just bad journalism is really worrisome. And then you've got the situation in The Washington Post, where just people are fleeing the Post, including for The Atlantic. I, you know, I just, uh, you know, I, I worry about the state of journalism. I worry about the fragmentation of how Americans are getting their information. And, I mean, one of the reasons we do this podcast is because more and more Americans are actually getting their information from podcasts than they are from the traditional media. And I know that may or may not be a good thing. I'm not sure.

Well, if they're listening to us, it's clearly a, uh, it's clearly a good thing. Uh, let's move on to this. This is this is grim. I don't mean to make light of it. It's, um, it's a very grim situation. Um, and, you know, I think the only, again, let me, what, what could there possibly be that could, good, good that come out of? Sooner or later, the, the Bibi government will fall. That coalition will fall. It may fall over, uh, the issue of drafting the ultra-Orthodox. Yeah. Uh, it may fall over some sort of ceasefire in Gaza if, if we lean on the Israelis. Um, and then I think you'll, you know, you'll get a different kind of Israeli government, hopefully led by somebody like, uh, Gadi Eisenkot or somebody like that, uh, who will be, you know, much more to, to our way of, uh, thinking. I mean, there's, I do think it's important to stress to people is, you know, most Israelis don't want this, and they don't think this is good. And, um, you know, just the way the, the Israeli political system operates, it's, it's Bibi calling the shots. And, you know, in the same way that, let's face it, you know, you can have a president elected here with a minority of the popular vote, and in the UK, you can have somebody with a, why, what was it, 36% of the vote and a decisive majority in the House of Commons. So that's, you know, that's part of the anomaly.

I, I do want to throw just one dart, though, at, uh, President Macron of France. Easy to do. Uh, deciding that, okay, now's the time I'm going to show the Israelis I'm going to recognize Palestine. So this is at a time when the Palestinian Authority has like zero credibility in the West Bank, when there's very little chance of a real Palestinian state. All it can do is annoy the Israelis. It'll get you no credit anywhere else in the world. It's, you know, you and I both have dear friends who are French diplomats, and at its best, the French are terrific. And, and this is not the best. This is vanity. And it, it's helps explain why I think the French have had it. I find it very, found it very difficult to exercise the kind of leadership in, uh, Europe that they would like to, to exercise, because this is, you know, uh, kind of a monarchical style that just doesn't go down well with anybody else. The best thing I can say about President Macron, who of course, um, uh, is term-limited, so he will not be able to run again, um, uh, is that I hope he and, and Brigitte Macron are successful in their lawsuit against Candace Owens.

[Laughter] Um, we, you know, um, while we're, uh, on the Middle East, we probably should touch on both, uh, Iran and Syria, which are also, you know, uh, you know, crucial subjects. I, not a whole lot, I don't think to say right now about, uh, Iran, other than, um, although there are some folks who are, you know, still wanting to insist that the strikes by Israel and the United States did nothing really, um, beneficial, um, in the region, or, or to the Iranian nuclear program. I think the column by David Ignatius in The Post the other day that concludes the same thing that you and I have concluded a couple times, which is that this, you know, set of actions has set back the Iranian program by a year or two, um, and that, you know, created potentially some opportunities for, for Iran to, um, to back off and to negotiate. The Europeans are now negotiating with, uh, with Iran. Um, they're holding over Iran's head the possibility of snapback of sanctions, which would be very damaging to a, a regime that already is like, um, economically very strapped and, and facing potentially huge water shortages in Tehran, water in Tehran.

Yeah. And depopulate the capital and whatnot. So, um, uh, I think, you know, we'll have to see where it, where it goes. But I, I'm struck by the fact that although they're not cooperating with the IAEA inspectors, they have not withdrawn from the NPT, and they're keeping open, keeping their options open. And there does seem to be some internal, uh, debate and fight over which direction to take. So, that, I mean, that's the, uh, the Iranian style. I think I, um, so, couple, two, two, two thoughts. One is, um, there was a, a piece by, um, Rerect and I think Ray Take, both of whom argued that the succession to Khamenei will probably come from the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that basically this will be more hardline, even more hardline, even more ideological, even more committed to, you know, struggle and violence. Balance and so on. And, you know, my thought about that was, well, that's plausible, but we don't know about what the internal splits are and, and so on. And that, um, you know, and I'm, as you know, I'm always skeptical of the argument, well, you know, if the current leadership goes, then the hard men take over. And we heard that said about Stalin, after all. Um, so that's, that's one thought that I have.

But the, the other thing that in recent days has kept on running through my head is a line from the speech that Solzhenitsyn gave in, what was it, '78 or '79, at Harvard, "A World Split Apart," which, this is the one that everybody got very upset about because he was, he was being critical of the West. And one thing he says, look, any, any deeply rooted civilization is something of a riddle to outsiders. And I think that's absolutely right. I mean, this is, we are dealing here with a very deep civilization, um, on which you now have this layer of kind of revolutionary, um, uh, Islamism of a particular type, which was, you know, in some ways at variance with the rest of history. Traditionally, the Shia were quietists. In other words, they, having been a minority, they, their view was, keep your head down. And, uh, the Ayatollah Khomeini was a real break with that when he talked about the rule of the jurisprudent. And, and so I, I just have this feeling that in, in the case of Iran, as to some extent in a different way in the case with Russia, we just don't know what's going on below the surface. We can't know what's going on below the surface. Things may erupt that will surprise us. And whatever happens, it probably won't be, it, it won't be linear. That's, you know, that's not much comfort, but it, it, I think it gets us to the level of uncertainty that there is in the world that we're operating in now.

I, I completely agree with that, actually. Um, you know, could end up being the hardliners, but, you know, then again, maybe not. You just don't know. Um, what about Syria? What, what are your?

Well, you know, that's a perfect segue into Syria, right? Because, uh, no one anticipated the regime collapsing the way it did in December. Um, no one would have predicted, I think, that, uh, people would be willing to invest as much hope in Faruq al-Shara, uh, you know, a former, former leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, um, you know, to put the country back together. Um, but, but I think it's interesting that I think there, you know, there are a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, folks who are looking at it from the outside who very much want that to happen. Um, but they have different ideas, I think, about how, how to make it happen. And, and so, I mean, here again, the Israelis, I, I think are a little bit the odd, you know, odd ones out in the sense that, um, they too, I don't think anticipated that the regime would collapse the way it did. They are rightly very concerned about, you know, uh, al-Shara's background, uh, you know, and that to have a jihadist state essentially on their doorstep would be, you know, a real, a real problem. By the same token, I think they have tended to, uh, pursue tactics, um, that may make it more likely that that's what they're going to end up with, um, in the end. And I, I worry a little bit. I understand why they, they've got, you know, a Druze population in Israel that's got relationships with the Druze in, uh, in southern Syria. Um, those southern Syrian Druze have become kind of clients of, of Israel. Uh, I worry that you're going to get the tail wagging the dog, however, you know, and it, it's not clear to me that Israel taking on every grievance that the, the Druze have is necessarily the right approach for them to be taken to Syria at large. So, we'll have to see what happens, but that's my kind of take.

I'm a little bit more sympathetic, uh, to the Israelis on this one, although I think your larger point is correct. I mean, the, the Druze play a very interesting role in internal Israeli politics at large, not so much as political actors, but, you know, this is a, a substantial minority which has been heroically loyal, uh, to the Israeli state. You know, they serve in the military, serve in the military, and they're on the front lines, and they're quite heroic. Um, you know, what was going on in Syria and what has been going on in Syria is, you, you have had these outbreaks of awful sectarian violence at first directed against the Alawites, um, and criminal activity. I mean, a lot of activity. I mean, all these things end up, a lot of this has got to do with the Captagon trade, which the Assad family was, you know, skimming money off of. And now the kind of the remnants of that, those organized criminal, you know, activities, there's actually a huge story to be written about Captagon in the Middle East, this illicit drug, because a lot of the attackers on October 7th were high on Captagon. Um, but, you, what was going on was, what started as perhaps a kind of like a criminal interaction did become sectarian violence, including, you know, killings, but also, uh, you know, mutilation and stuff like that. And, um, I think the Israelis to some extent felt that they had to do it. Now, the question is, um, what can you reasonably expect? Just one data point, I was talking to somebody who knows that part of the world.

The world quite well, and he said, "Actually, one thing about Char is he's actually at odds with a lot of his own military to the extent that there's an organized military which is much more the hardcore ISIS types, um, and who are involved in in some of this. So he's kind of, you know, riding this bicycle um down the middle of the path."

But I think, you know, it raises a a larger point, which is, you know, we we're always searching for the simplest narrative. Okay, he's an unredeemed, somebody so and so is an unredeemed bad guy, or so and so used to be a bad guy, but now he's come over to our side, so he's a reformed bad guy. He's actually now a good guy. Um, when people do change and evolve to their circumstances, they may retain some of the things that were always part of them. They may go back to what they were. They may evolve in a different direction. And the, you know, the problem is you have to be be willing to kind of, you know, work work with some of these kinds of people while always keeping one hand, you know, on the pistol on your hip in case they turn out to be as bad as they might be. You you just don't know.

When I've Israeli military people, they say, "Yeah, actually, you know, we were having kind of quiet talks with the Syrians and it was it was okay." By the way, just since the Middle East is always grim, the the the one place where there is some rays of sunshine is is uh Lebanon where you do have a government that is, you know, taking advantage to the extent it can of the weakening of Hisba. And I think the Israelis are trying to help along with that. And if it' be possible to restore Lebanon to, you know, something like what it was in the 60s, that would be that would be a wonderful thing. Whether it's possible or not, I don't know.

"Well, the big prize, I mean, isn't the big prize here for Lebanon and Syria to join the Abraham Accords?"

Um, I don't know whether joining the Abraham Accords per se, but I think a formal peace with Israel and normal relations with Israel um and the creation. I mean, that you know, you're you're stuck with the problem of the Lebanese state. So you can thank the French for that one too. Uh, what was the last census? 1936, I think, yeah, something like that. You know, where they you sort of allocate all kinds of positions based on uh, you know, the size of the religion. Well, if you did it on the census now, the Shia would be dominant.

"Well, that's exactly. And so the question is, is it possible to hammer something out? Plus Lebanon is sort of a shattered state in many ways and bankrupt and so on. So, yeah, economies, I'm not sure I'm hugely optimistic."

The I mean, the other thing, one other thing about Syria is the Israelis are deeply fearful of the Turks, or at least they're deeply fearful of Erdogan. They like the Turks as people. Uh, they're very fearful of Erdogan, who they think of as Muslim Brotherhood, and they're not wrong. Yeah. Well, and so there's, but but then again, you know, they may end up doing things which make it more likely that you'll have Turkish bases in Syria. So, right, the possibility of doing counterproductive stuff.

We're we're running um we're running out of time and this rules. We can maybe we can conclude with something that is unfortunately Middle East relevant, but I'm um as a former professor and dean, I'm keenly interested and I'm and I'm really curious to hear your point of view. And that is uh this settlement um that the Trump administration seems to have written have reached with Columbia University. And I'll just stay up front that I'm deeply ambivalent about all this. Um, but but and I'm more than happy to to to go forth, but I'd like to hear I'd like to hear your view.

Let me actually maybe if though I could just begin for our listeners, go through what some of the key points of this are. Um, so uh the UN, the the frozen funding gets unfrozen. Uh, Columbia pays 200 million to the US government and $21 million into a Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims settlement fund. So that's basically for people who are discriminated against. It kind of wraps up various um uh investigations. Uh, there's an appointment of an administrator to oversee implementation of agreement on anti-semitism. Uh, admissions reform. Columbia is going to bar the use of race or national origin in admissions decisions, including indirect methods like personal statements. Uh, non-discrimination in in programs and hiring. That's basically in the law. Um, a bit more reporting than they had before on international students. Um, although again, this is you know, kind of within within uh stuff that's all within the law. Um, the I think the big things are internal review of the Middle East programs. So there are several different programs. There's going to be a new senior vice provost to review its programs. A change in in the disciplinary structure with which takes discipline away from the university senate, moves it to the provost. Uh, things like banning masks in demonstrations except for uh medical reasons. Um, and uh bring in a sworn uh police force which would have arrest um uh the ability to to arrest authority. Yeah. And and then there's there's some stuff apparently about um having to justify or possibly even reduce the number of foreign students, which is I think more dicey kind of thing. So that's that's I think there's also something in there about providing the government with more transparency about the source of overseas funding for universities. Yeah. Although that's again, that that is all that stuff is in current law I I believe and universities are not have not always been great about that.

Yeah, I I I too ambivalent. I mean, I'm ambivalent, although, you know, one of our uh guests earlier this year, Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, has has indicated he thinks this Columbia settlement might be a pretty good template for settlements with other universities. Um, my concern, well, first of all, you know, um, I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to play one on our podcast, but, um, you know, I would be happy to stipulate as lawyers would say that uh American uh universities and tertiary education in the United States has over the last, I would say maybe 30 years, really, um, in the humanities, at least, really been subject to a lot of really un uh healthy, I think, forces and impulses. Um, and you can, you know, if you want to categorize them or or, you know, bin them as woke, I mean, I I'm happy to say that I think that's, you know, a reality and that you certainly have had cancel culture, and you and I have even seen it at at SC, which was a professional school where I think it's even less, you know, less prevalent than in the undergraduate, you know, institutions. Um, and so many of these remedies in and of themselves, I don't really, you know, have a bone to pick with. Um, it sounds fairly reasonable and certainly better in some ways than what the government was initially proposing, uh, where they were going to go in and monitor the faculty themselves, which I think would have been truly, uh, truly bad.

But I guess what sticks in my craw is kind of the way this has all been done. The the means by which this has been accomplished, which is essentially, you know, kind of the imposition of government power uh to destroy the university in order to win these concessions. Now, I know that some people will make the argument, some people you and I know will make the argument, well, it was government intervention that, you know, created some of these problems. And that's certainly the case with the way that the Department of Education interpreted certain titles of the US Code, which among other things, in my view, led to the uh um really over the the um the growth of of an administrative state in the university whose very being required the continuation of the problem that they were meant to be solving was one of the things that, you know, led the academy to the state that it found itself in. But again, I find just the manner in which this has been done, you know, very dangerous. And dangerous in part because eventually, you know, there's going to be another, you know, government elected that's going to have a different view, but have this as a precedent for imposing its agenda on the university as well. I would rather that universities had tried to heal themselves, although maybe that was impossible. I don't know.

Yeah. So I I more or less agree with that. You know, I uh I I not only found kind of the use of of uh cracking down on anti-semitism as a battering ram distasteful, I, you know, I worry about the blowback. Um, which I think will come. Uh, I would emphasize maybe a little bit more strongly than you did the extent to which all the precedents for this were set in previous administrations. And uh I don't know if you knew Charles Lipson, who was a he was in graduate school roughly the same time as I was and was a is now a professor emeritus at University of Chicago, and he wrote a quite interesting piece in the Daily Telegraph, I know I didn't publish it in the States, saying, hey, um, you know, the same thing, h exactly the same thing happened under Obama or Biden. But the thing is that the administrative class in in these universities were ideologically aligned with those administrations, so they didn't have to lean very hard, but the threat was there. And I I remembered that u you know, from my own time as a as a as a professor.

Um, I, you know, I think that part of the problem is there are large parts of the university that are of universities that are broken. You know, sort of a minor thing, putting discipline back in the hands of the president of the university or or provost, actually, I think it's a very good thing and taking it away from faculty. But if there's one thing that I, you know, my experience as a dean taught me and and and I'm talking to other deans, you know, this feeling has been only been reinforced, which is the idea of faculty governance is noble, and it no longer works. Uh, it's become a much more self-centered kind of business. And so you you just need a different, you need a different kind of structure, which is, let's face it, more like the older um, the older structure. My deepest fear in all this is that these attitudes just go underground, and you know, the administrative state doesn't wither away. Uh, yes, you know, there'll be some DEI offices that get eliminated, or they begin, you know, they'll be called something else. That and that's actually happens at uh Columbia, and it's happened at Harvard too. There's now something called, I think, the Harvard Foundation, but it's the same old thing. It's just they they've been folded into something much more innocuous sounding, and it reemerges. And, you know, that's in some ways the fundamental problem.

I completely agree with you. And it's not just the humanities. There's a lot that's wrong with the social sciences. There's there's a lot that's deeply, I mean, there's there's a lot that's deeply wrong with universities. When what is the percentage of grades of A minuses and A's at Yale now? It's like 80% or something like that. That that that you have to be very courageous to give anybody a C. It you're courageous to give him a B+. Yeah. I mean, it it it it tells me that there's there's something deeply deeply wrong here. Now, will this kind of jar the universities into self-awareness? I'm not so sure. Will it eliminate the problem of, you know, disciplines that aren't really disciplines and majors that are just basically ideological programs by another name? I I don't know. I I guess my best hope is that this spurs some kind of reflection on the part of universities. Um, but I'm not holding my breath. And again, you know me, I'm always looking for something to be optimistic about. The thing that makes me optimistic in the United States is we have a very large array of tertiary educational institutions. And um, if some, you know, get paralyzed by this sort of stuff, there'll be others that will that will flourish, and there will be innovation and different ways of doing business. And, you know, higher, we we're we're seeing the end, I think, of one model of higher education, which is the world post World War II model of higher education. There have been other models in our history. I don't know what the new model will look like, but I I just have a feeling we're headed to one.

Uh, not to prolong this conversation, but just to tie it off. I think you and I stopped teaching at precisely the right time. Yeah. Because I I really do not want to spend my waning years on this mortal coil trying to figure out if my students actually wrote their papers or whether it was written by Claude or Chat GPT or some other AI program. And I I from you know, word of mouth, I think our our colleagues who are still in the profesorate are you know, wrestling almost full-time with that now. So I I have I have a dear friend who's a wonderful historian who retired a couple years before me, who's a man of the center left. So he's politically he's not not where I am, but you know, we were talking about uh university life, and he said, you know, my friend, he said, you and I are we're incredibly fortunate. We got these beautiful state staterooms on the Titanic, and we managed to get into the last lifeboat.

Well, we had intended to talk about other parts of the world that are not getting the attention they deserve and the u whether or not the conflicts that are breaking out there are or are not or in some way related to the decline of the American le order that we talked about a few weeks ago. We'll have to, you know, put that conversation off um to the future. But at least next week, I know we will be talking about a part of the world that we have neglected, and that is Central Asia. So, we'll we'll be back uh to do that next week. Until then, um stay cool, Elliot.

Yeah, you too, Eric.