Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm Afshin Ratansi. Welcome back to Going Underground. Broadcasting all around the world from the UAE 162 years to the day the first Geneva Convention was signed. That's the first of four treaties that supposedly set the rules for international humanitarian law during wartime. They're all being broken today. Just this year amidst uk, US EU armed genocides in Gaza and Lebanon, Trump Brazen broke the conventions by threatening Iranian civilian infrastructure after he targeted a girls school in MINAB which killed 168 civilians, mostly children. Many in the global south believe the war in Iran to be a harbinger of the end of the American empire. After all, consider a declining empire landing on an island to try and subvert a revolution. Not the US Empire on Kesham island to subvert the Islamic revolution, But what happened 250 years ago today when the British Empire's forces landed on Long Island, New York. The British inflicted one of George Washington's earliest and most serious military defeats. But the USA won the war and the British lost an empire. The theme of defeats preceding victory is a major one in a new book, to dare Mighty US Defense Strategy since the Revolution. It's published to coincide with George Washington's success. But what is the USA celebrating? Forever War and 40 million Americans, which is almost the entire population of Iraq or Afghanistan needing federal aid to eat. Joining me is the author of Today are mighty things, Dr. Michael O', Hanlon, who was on the advisory board of the CIA and on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Today. He is senior fellow and director of Research in Foreign Policy at the Brooks Institution.
Dr. Hanlon, Mike, thanks so much for coming back on. I'm not sure whether you liked what I did there.
20th book, 20 books. I don't know how many books this is. I've got to apologize to the viewers for the slightly blurry picture. But tell me about the book. And I mean I mentioned there that it was an anniversary of George Washington's how the book takes us from the revolution to Iran.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Greetings. Well, thank you for having me. And you did very well to mention the 250th anniversary because at this time in 1770, 96, we had of course just signed the Declaration of Independence or actually we were about to formally sign it, but we had already declared it and yet we were losing on the battlefield. That was the worst six month stretch of the whole war. George Washington was trying to stand up sort of mano a mano to the redcoats of the British Empire, which as you noted were a Very powerful force in that day. And by the way, the Brits did keep an empire even after they lost the United States. But nonetheless, they did lose the colonies, and they did quite well in those months of July, August, September, October, November, all the way up until Christmas time, December 26, roughly as George Washington could not face down the Brits and learned how to be more of a counterpuncher, ultimately, which was the key to success for the colonists over the next half dozen years of warfare. So that was a striking turnaround in how we fought. And it wound up in some ways foreshadowing some of the opposition that not only the United States, but France and Russia and other great powers of the last hundred years have faced, everywhere from Afghanistan to Vietnam to Algeria, where often the established powers have been defeated by insurgents using these asymmetric tactics. And so that 250 years ago, it was the other way around. The United States used those sorts of counterpunching tactics against the Brits.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: So Iran can learn from the defeats. Arguably, what were the defeat. What do you say are the major defeats then that, I mean, you kind of say in the book, make the United States stronger.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's an interesting history. You know, we do not have an unblemished history. I don't think any great power does. And I think one of the most fascinating trends is that on the battlefield, the United States has had its roughest stretch in the modern era, even though in that period of time, the United States has generally been acknowledged to be the world's number one military power. Now, of course, you can debate that depending on what category of capability, what theater of warfare. And clearly, Russia, Soviet Union, China had been formidable rivals to the United States in the modern era. And back In World War II, of course, the Soviet Union was a crucial ally of the United States, as was Britain. So it's not like we've been sitting on top of the world all by ourselves. But since World War II, since winning World War II, with the Soviet Union and the Brits as our key allies, we have struggled. We have struggled in Korea, where we fought to a draw. We lost the Vietnam War, we lost the Afghanistan War, and we sort of fought to a draw in Iraq. And so it's sort of striking. Even though this period has been characterized by American global influence and some people even say hegemony on the battlefield, it really has not been so.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Which means that you can lose battles, you can lose wars, but retain hegemonic power.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe that's an important lesson for all great powers. To remember, because sometimes when you're in the middle of a war, it seems more important than it may actually be. It's striking that we're getting along pretty well with Vietnam these days in the United States. Even though we lost the war to Vietnam.
Does that mean that the war itself was pointless? Probably. Does it mean that, you know, the war was crucial for our global standing? Clearly not, because even after losing that war, we wound up regrouping and having a good 1980s and then successfully completing the Cold War without a direct conflict. So I think great powers need to bear in mind sometimes the smaller wars don't matter as much as they may think.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: But who does it actually benefit? Because the American public, the American people clearly did not benefit from, say, the Vietnam War or the war on Iraq.
Who is it benefiting? Just a small number of people in Washington.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: You know, I'm sure you're right. There are some people who benefit. But I think the simpler way to understand why we make these mistakes, and I think it probably goes for other great powers as well, is that people get afraid of losing their position in the world, even though they really don't have reason to be quite that afraid. Again, they're. Our strength is more resilient, is more broad based, is more enduring than we often realize when we get involved in a given conflict. And so it often tends to be fear, and maybe an exaggerated fear more than any kind of greed or positive incentive in the modern era. Now, in the 19th century, it was different. In the 19th century, the United States, of course, expanded dramatically. We won the revolution, but in that time, we were just a string of colonies along the Atlantic coast. And by the end of the 19th century, we, of course, were a continental power stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And that was primarily the result of purchasing Louisiana territories from France, but defeating Native Americans and Mexicans and to some extent Spaniards in other wars that allowed us to expand. And in that period of time, the United States thought we were, you know, and I think it's partly correct, but probably also a story, a myth that we tell ourselves as part of our national narrative. We were expanding democracy. We had a concept of manifest destiny, that this was sort of naturally our land. Of course, Native Americans did not feel that way, and some of our other opponents in war did not feel that way. In the 19th century, we were characterized by this desire to build a big country. And, you know, maybe a little bit later than Russia in, let's say, the 18th century, under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, became the great empire that we associate with Russia and certainly China over the centuries as well. So it's true of most major powers, but in that period, I think we were more motivated by. By positive. Well, I don't want to say. I shouldn't say positive by. By a desire to expand, by a desire for more power, more control, more influence.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: I'm sure. I'm sure many people will see it as. As genocide, actually, obviously within that continent. But. But actually what, what amazed me by the book is the level of continuity, because very early on after the Declaration of Independence, you talk about American ships going into the Mediterranean and off the coast of Africa. They were already expanding.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: One thing that I believe most foreign observers understand about America, but we don't always understand about ourselves. We have always been a very assertive country. And you're right, it started even in the first decade or two after our independence. We have this myth that we tell ourselves of American isolationism, but we really have never, except maybe for the 1920s and 1930s, never really been characterized by a philosophy that I would describe as isolationism. The first half of our history was expansionism, and then since that time, it's been largely this view that the world needs us to play this stabilizing role. And of course, that began at times when we were fighting with Russia against common enemies in both world wars. But of course, then it became something different in the Cold War and something again different in the post Cold War. But it's always been this notion that we have to help stabilize the world. I think there's some truth to that. Obviously you would disagree with some of that, but I think we, in the first half of our history, it was primarily expansionism that motivated us.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think some on the maga, Right, who are accused of being isolationist were taught that arguably in schools then. I mean, there's a sentence here. The credibility of NATO buttressed by American resoluteness in quotes, despite unsuccessful wars.
I mean, if you live in a NATO country and you're from a NATO country, not the United States, you're going to feel that's not actually what happened after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, I mean, perhaps Yugoslavia, let alone the latest war on Iran. Obviously, NATO powers are refusing to take part or have been refusing or are in secret helping, like Italy and Britain.
Just explain that. Why you think the credibility of NATO is buttressed by arguably failure.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I'm not saying we should go finding wars to fight just to prove resoluteness, but I do think that if you look at our history over the 250 years that we have been assertive, and Since World War II, we've been very engaged globally.
And I think our friends and neutrals and adversaries around the world understand that about the United States. They sometimes think they can figure out ways to defeat us, but they usually don't think that we'll stand by passively and just watch major conflicts go by without getting involved. So, again, I don't support.
As a matter of history or if I had been alive and been a scholar at the time, I would not have supported the Vietnam War. I don't think it wasn't a necessary war. But having fought it and also in Afghanistan, we showed that we have a toughness.
Now, that's not always a good thing. Sometimes it's better to realize the war you're fighting is unnecessary or unproductive or even unethical. And as you know, I feel like Russia should come to that realization now in Ukraine, I think we should.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: I want to get on to Russia. I will get on to Russia and what's happening in Ukraine. But then. So you would have been, you think, against the Vietnam War at the time, but you were for the Afghanistan war. And in this book, you say the sacrifice was not in vain.
I mean, what, sacrificing all those American soldiers, let alone countless Afghans, was not in vain? What did it achieve? The war, American war in Afghanistan, which was, I don't know how many times longer than World War I and World War II put together.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Well, first of all, to say it's not in vain is not to somehow defend every aspect of it.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: I mean, clearly it was.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: There were a lot of lives to.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Clearly, the war in Afghanistan was in vain.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: We have not been attacked again by al Qaeda on the homeland in the period of time after which no one
[00:11:46] Speaker B: from Al Qaeda was Afghan.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: No, I know. Well, there were some. But the original al Qaeda attackers, as you correctly note, were from the Middle East. But my point is that by showing the Taliban government that we were prepared to overthrow them and fight them for 20 years if necessary, once they gave al Qaeda safe haven within Afghanistan to help plan those attacks. The Taliban has not associated itself closely with al Qaeda since then and has not allowed al Qaeda to plan attacks against the Western world since then. Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: You know, funny enough, we had the former head of Shin Bet on the other day on going underground, I asked him why al Qaeda never attacks Israel, for instance. Why I say that in response to what you just said is because you say in the book a strong Reagan administration security policy legacy there. You characterize it as that. But surely Reagan led to al Qaeda.
That was the Reagan legacy, giving us the kind of systems and structures in in Afghanistan that would then create the destruction on September 11, 2001.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Well, there's truth to the idea that, yes, supporting the mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan created and, and armed many of the same people who wound up reforming as the Taliban later. And I think the real tragedy for the United States was not so much during the Reagan years, But in the 1990s when the world, including us, basically collectively washed ourselves of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal and we left that region in chaos. And I think we owed it as a moral debt, if nothing else to the Afghan people and to the Pakistan to try to help stabilize the situation. But instead by walking away, we allowed some of the mujahideen to reform as the Taliban. So I agree with your analysis on that point. That's what you are getting at.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Dr. Michael O'. Hanlon. I'll stop you there. More from the senior fellow and director of Research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution after this break.
Welcome back to going underground. I'm still here with former Pentagon and CIA board member Dr. Michael O', Hanlon, author of Today Mighty Things, US Defense Strategy since the Revolution.
Dr. O', Hannan, we were ending part one there about the events on 911 and you were saying the reason was more in the 1990s rather than the Reagan funding of the mujahideen that would morph into al Qaeda.
Isn't that the problem, though?
The book doesn't mention that it says Reagan administration security policy legacy was strong.
And as you say, you're saying you blame more the 90s strategy.
But the point is that the United States then went on to support al Qaeda in Syria anyway. It's kind of missing from the book. You're saying dare mighty things to someone who's living in Syria today or Iraq or some element where their local control is by some Islamist movement, they're gonna be thinking, no, the United States strategy to dare mighty things to dare al Qaeda and create al Qaeda in isis. Daesh.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Well, if you're talking about the Syria Civil War from 2011 onward, and I was, as you say, on the CIA advisory board at that time and also part of the broader debate in the United States, the Obama administration was reluctant to support the Syrian opposition very much because it knew there were al Qaeda sympathizers within that group. And even though declared American policy was to try to help overthrow the president Assad in Syria. There was never that much enthusiasm behind the mission in the United States. And by the way, I think Vladimir Putin figured that out, which is why in 2015 he recognized that he could send Russian forces in to prop up the government of Assad and not be
[00:15:40] Speaker B: able to hang on Dr. Hadlan, I didn't mean the Obama administration publicly maybe, but you know that we have the leaked document from Jake Sullivan. I take it out quite often on this show from Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton. See last item. Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria. It was a COVID support for Al Qaeda, just as it was COVID support for what would become Al Qaeda that created 9 11. It was COVID support that would lead to ISIS, Daesh beheadings and Al Qaeda. It's a bit like Israel's COVID support for Hamas. That's the today mighty things. That's the U.S. defense strategy.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Well, Jake Sullivan, I don't, I don't know that memo, but I'm sure you're probably quoting.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: I mean, you know, Jake Sullivan, clearly National Security Advisor saying it, but.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Right. Let me just say that in that period that I was involved in some of the internal conversations, although I was never a policymaker. The advisory board is not, you know, it's an official body, but it's volunteer part time. But I know that there was a lot of reluctance to get too associated with those groups because they were extremists and the United States was ambivalent. We wanted Assad to fall, but we wanted him to fall to the right people.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Except the right people didn't.
That's not ambivalence here. Jake Sullivan's very clear.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: The policy was ambivalent.
Jake's words may not have been ambivalent, but if you look at the policy over the year of the 2010s, we never had our heart behind the idea of really supporting the opposition precisely because as you say, a lot of them were Al Qaeda.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Okay, let's go to. In your book what it says about the roots of the conflict in Ukraine. You say that James Baker assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward.
So you know, that's often characterized in NATO nation media as a Kremlin talking point. Why do you think in NATO mainstream media the conflict was unprovoked? I mean, every journalist in so called mainstream television and the New York Times, they use the word unprovoked. Yeah. In your book you're saying the expansion of NATO had been agreed with between Baker and Gorbachev.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are roots in the Russian attacks. On Ukraine that you can explain partly out of this history. And I think it was provoked or
[00:18:05] Speaker B: was it not provoked? You don't have to support Putin.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Let me give a full sentence answer.
The United States made policy mistakes that made it more likely Russia would react this way. But Russia's reaction was still wrong. Russia's reaction was criminal, but it was also foreseeable. It was foreseeable that in the Russian state there would be this sense that if we got too close to Russia's own territory, there would be a strong Russian reaction. I think we should have understood that better than we did and approached the idea of NATO expansion in a fundamentally different way.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: I mean, you understood it, didn't you? You held positions on boards. Did you not warn people? I know that lots of other former officials do say that they warned.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: I wrote a book in 2017 proposing a different security architecture for Eastern Europe because I didn't think we would do well in our future relationship with Russia if we continue down the path that we were on. That does not mean that I justify, as you point out, doesn't mean I justify what Putin did.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: No one is saying you do.
What I find strange is when having to continually say that, you know, that doesn't mean I support.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: I think it's okay for me to explain. I think I'm allowed to explain the full extent of my thinking. And great powers, I think we have to try to understand their narratives. For Russia, there is a sense of constant competition with the west that you and I understand very well. There is a sense that NATO was a hostile or adversarial military alliance. I think we in the west should have understood that some of that perception would continue after the Cold War was over, especially.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: I do want to get on to quotes in the book here, but I mean, you know, it has been publicly admitted that it was very knowledgeable, the people in Washington about what was going on.
And certainly in Western Europe, they knew very much that this was the kind of thing that was going to follow if they were going to expand. And clearly, if the US's objective is to defend Ukraine, surely the United States, and this is a Joe Biden question, really, some kind of neutral security agreement should have been pursued, not just seeing so many hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians being killed. What is the motive? When, when Russia was suitably provoked, as it were, why did the United States not pursue? I mean, we don't know what Trump is doing, but certainly under Biden, no attempt for any kind of neutral security agreement under the terms that you arguably would have foreseen and tried to draw out before 2022. Why has there been no effort for this? Is it really to fight a war against Russia?
You can see what it looks like to fight a war against Russia. To the last Ukrainian well, first of
[00:20:43] Speaker A: all, as you know, I would have handled it differently. And it was not because what Russia has done has been justifiable, but because it was predictable.
And so the reason why NATO expansion happened the way it did, and I've often argued against it and I've argued against the kind of proponents. They were not trying to provoke Russia. They were trying in their minds to spread democracy and a zone of peace. And there were even thoughts in the 1990s and early 2000s maybe Russia would be part of that someday. That was perhaps naive and it certainly doesn't look realistic now. But the goal was that, that we had sort of righteousness on our side because we were trying to promote democracy and the peaceful resolution of disputes and bringing in former.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: But no one believes that now because we the chance. Former chancellor of Germany explained that the Minsk agreement was a. Was used as a tactic to rearm Ukraine for a. For a conflict.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: What I just said is my understanding of Western thinking towards NATO expansion taken over the 30, 35 year period we're talking about, there was this sense that it was the right thing to do because it would democratize and stabilize Europe. And there were a lot of efforts made during the Clinton and early Bush period to reach out to Russia. I don't think they were enough. I don't think they were adequate. But that period of time there was a sincerity in trying to reach out to Russia as well as we know it all fell apart starting roughly name your date. 2006. 2 2007. You know, Putin's famous speech at the Munich security conference in 2007 was clearly an acknowledgment a turning point had been reached. And then things got worse again when he became this is because of what
[00:22:20] Speaker B: was happening in Georgia and so many other countries surrounding Russia.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Clearly, yeah, it was a combination of the color revolutions where Putin thought that we were behind them. Also our problems in the Middle East. We have, we have the papers, we
[00:22:35] Speaker B: have the proof, we have all the WikiLeaks cables that show it. Now it's not a really a bonus.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: No. Well, we were in favor of democracy and the way we defined that we wanted to support multiple opposition parties and often parties that were, you know, challengers to a party supported by Russia. So yes, in that sense we were
[00:22:52] Speaker B: competing with Russia Funding of campaign. I mean, I do want to get on to back to the book in a second, but I mean, you know, I think any neutral observer would see what the USAID was doing in those different countries to change the whole context.
They understood history.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: You're not taking yes for an answer. I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing with you that the way that Putin saw this is the United States by promoting democracy and multiple parties, many of them in opposition to Russia. Therefore, we were trying to compete with Russia in its own backyard strategically. So that was a big part of the turning point. The way the Iraq war played out was another part of the turning point.
Obviously, when Secretary Clinton challenged Putin himself during his effort to regain the Kremlin in 2012, that was important as well. So we all know things fell apart over that period from the mid 2000s through the mid 2010s, plus or minus. But in the early years, if you're asking for the motivation, again, it was this idea. We're going to democratize and stabilize Europe and we'll try to reach out to Russia as much as we can in the process. That was the prevailing paradigm.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Okay. Well, I mean, the result as far as we could see from the perspective of the global south, arguably is BRICS plus and a new world has been the resulting order and a collapsing Western Europe. But in the book, you're very clear. You say the simplest long term solution is to station US Combat power in Estonia and Latvia. That is what you say in the book, page 345.
Why do you not think that this would draw us Russia direct conflict, a Baltic battle turning into global nuclear annihilation? And how. What do you mean?
[00:24:34] Speaker A: You know, NATO is already in the Baltics and we're now more in the Baltics because of the support for Ukraine. And so maybe there can be a negotiated end to the Ukraine war that pulls back those forces. I don't know. But you know, the book was written in 2024, 25, published in early 26 in the context of an ongoing war in Ukraine, where Putin was also challenging the sovereignty of the Baltic states. And so I think we have to make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn't get the wrong idea about NATO's willingness to defend its own members. I might not have been in favor of bringing the Baltics into NATO, but now that they're in, I think we have to be resolute US Soldiers on
[00:25:12] Speaker B: the ground in Latvia and Estonia. I mean, that will of course provoke the Russian Federation, I would imagine. I mean, Putin being a very patient man after 2014, maybe it'll take a while, but certainly the opposition to Putin in Russia would want an immediate Russian response, arguably.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Well, you know, we're already in Poland and we tried for a long time not to put any combat forces east of Germany for all the reasons you alluded to with the Baker, Gorbachev, Bush conversation of the early 90s. But I think that at this point, with Russia challenging the sovereignty of NATO countries, we have to be clear and resolute. My hope would be a negotiated end to the Ukraine war that allows for a real detente and a, you know, one of the events.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: What we all want, it's all, what do we all want? But just finally, you do mention Iran.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Let me add one quick point. I want to make this point. If you look over 250 years, more often than not, the United States and Russia had been friends and partners rather than adversaries or rivals. And that's one of the advantages of taking this whole perspective. I would like to get back to the day when that's possible.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Again, I think we both want that, definitely. Since World War II, U.S. grand strategy has created the most stable, peaceful and prosperous world order in human history. Is one of those lines in your book 38 million have been killed just by US sanctions between 1970 and 2021. How is it stable, peaceful and prosperous?
How has U. S. Grand strategy possibly been done to do with that? And isn't the Iran war, the war in Iran, symptomatic of that? Especially now? I don't know. The United States and Israel are joined at the hip part of NDAA as the US defense strategy. Today, it's 250 years since the revolution.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: The simplest point I'm trying to make is we have not had World War III and the great powers have not fought each other directly, depending on your definition, since the United States and China fought in the Korean War.
And that's impressive by the standards of world history.
Again, the nice thing about writing this kind of a book is I can criticize a lot of specific American decisions, but still think that we've been a positive force in the world and make that broader argument. So I am not averse to criticizing a lot of aspects of U.S. foreign policy, including right now, in the last three years, some of the support we've given Israel. Israel had to respond very forcefully to October 7th, but it's gone too far and it's been too indiscriminate in its use of firepower in Gaza. In Iran, I would have stuck with the joint comprehensive plan of action under President Obama and tried to extend that deal.
So I disagree with President Trump's various decisions. But, you know, the, the preponderance of Iranian casualties this year. Were Iranians killed by their own regime, especially in January, in the terrible massacres
[00:27:48] Speaker B: of the demonstrators, if one believes it. Dr. Michael O', Hanlon, thank you.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Thank you kindly.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: And that's it for the show today. Mighty things. US Defense strategy since the revolution is out now. We'll be back on Monday to investigate new revelations about the secret plot so far to kill Donald Trump. Until then, you can keep in touch via all our social media, if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel, goingundergroundtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Monday.
