Rational Security: The “Take a Light Out of Crime” Edition

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“Ben, I'm going to light-beeping on your end. Is that your ankle monitor going off?”

I'm not anymore! As of this morning, my ankle monitor has been cut off. I am a free man, as Martin Luther King said, "Free it last, free it last, thank God Almighty. I am free it last, and more than that, a writ of habeas corpus has been issued for the release of Lord Laser and Lady Laser. Both of whom should be back at home within the next couple weeks."

I just wish this was the first time today you've compared yourself to Bernal Luther King.

But I am thrilled. I'm excited to see Mr. and Mrs. Laser back in business. It has been a long, important lady. Lord and lady, you know, you know, this is America. We don't respect there as talk to you. Yeah, exactly. But regardless, I'm excited to see them back in business.

“It's quite a day in court to see this process ended, and you properly represent it yourself as well.”

And your cause. Because I will see you're wearing your wonderful, I'm playing on the name of the shirts now, which I feel... Mr. Ivanka? Well, I was going to figure out what the appropriate dog shirt was to wear, and then Nostia pointed out to me... I'm about, obviously. McGrath the crime dog.

That I shouldn't be wearing a dog shirt because I was going to court to deal with the outcome of a Ukraine protest. I should go in Vish Ivanka, and so I did, and victory was mine. Justice was done, and all of my gear is going to be returned to me. But how many Vish Ivanka's do you have? Oh, six or eight.

I have a lot of dog shirts and a lot of Vish Ivanka. One of those, I support. I do kind of will love the idea of you, however, going to your hearing in a McGrath the crime dog shirt.

“And I think you're the one person who could maybe get away with it, because there is like a very, very eye-chance, the AUSA, and/or the judge involved.”

No who you are, unless in the rational security or a lot of our, at least, aware of law fair and rational security. So I feel like you're the one person who might get away with that, with any serious repercussions. Well, I will say based on the apparel of the median defendant in this proceeding, the had I've been wearing a dog shirt, I would not have been underdressed. Fair enough, fair enough, worth noting. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security.

The podcast where we invite you to join members of law fair family.

As we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories, there is one big news story dominating the headline still for the third week in a row.

That is, of course, the U.S. and Israeli military operations still ongoing in Iran, not over yet for the time being that it's having ramifications and all sorts of corners of the world. And we're going to talk about a couple of those ramifications today with an all star squad of official rational security veterans. First up, we have law fair public service fellow Ari Tabitabai, who I think is probably the most junior person to be inaugurated a rat sect veteran, but you have made so many appearances on it, because the world's been such a mess since you started with us, I think you've earned it at this point.

So Ari, thank you for coming back on the podcast, not from across the world now, about back here in the U.S. of a happy to have you back on. I take no responsibility for the events, but very happy to be here. Also, joining us is back on the show after a little bit of an absence, but excited to have her back as law first executive editor, Natalie Orpin, Natalie, thank you for coming back on the podcast as well. It's good to have you back. Well, thanks for having me. And also, coming back is of course, law fair, co-host, emeritus, Benjamin Wittis, law fair editor, chief as well, rational security co-host, emeritus, excuse me, Ben, a free man at last, happy to have you back on the podcast in shackles or no.

So we're still going to have to get your voice out there. Don't worry, you know, somewhere out there, there are rational security viewers, listeners viewers who have no idea what we're talking about.

“And I think that's just great. I believe that leave it on the explain. Oh, the Google, Google, Google, go to Dr. Daily and you'll figure out a bent subject, fiber the detailed account is.”

For regardless, we are thrilled to have such a group together talk about three stories, all of which are the common nexus of the ongoing Iran conflict, but trying to tackle a couple of unique expressions and consequences there of topic one for today, keeping it on the straight and narrow. Three weeks into the US and Israel's air campaign against Iran shipped traffic through the critical straight of removes remains at a virtual stop sending crude oil prices north of hundred dollars a barrel. Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggseth, said last week that vessels are safe to sail through the straight, but continue to tax on tankers to just otherwise.

Some neighboring Gulf States, among others, are going to turn and see that US strikes won't go far enough in preventing Iran attacks.

What do we make of these developments and how will it impact how other countries are navigating the broader conflict? Topic two, nine to five, nine. US efforts to secure European support for efforts to reopen the straight of our moves have fallen on deaf ears. With German officials among others describing it as a "not our war" and far outside the obligations imposed by NATO's article five and other defense commitments. In response, President Trump said that he was disappointed in NATO and once again hinted that he might exit it.

“It's the latest NATO and it has been a precipitous decline in transatlantic relations over the past three months. How much worse can things get and what could it mean for the future of the broader alliance?”

Topic three, unlawful good. Actually, I should put up at the end because the question mark unlawful good. A US strike on what turned out to be an elementary school in southern Iran in the early days of the US military campaign there has put a new focus on decisions by defense secretary, Pete Heggseth, to scale back rules and processes meant to reduce harm to civilians at armed conflict. Heggseth has called the rules of engagement stupid and has said that he wants to give military commanders maximum authority on the battlefield.

He's also repeatedly called for no quarter in Iran in other contexts in order that if taken literally what itself be a violation of the laws of armed conflict.

“Exactly how far has Heggseth unraveled the Pentagon's rules of engagement and what could the real consequences be in Iran and elsewhere?”

So, for our first topic, let us go to the straight of Hormuz, a critical waterway that has become the focus in many ways of the Iran conflict that is very much ongoing.

Not necessarily the focus of military operations, but the focus in terms of where the rubber is hitting the road in terms of Iranian pushback. I think on the United States and to some extent Israel as well. By exercising control of the state of Amuz, which has effectively done despite claims to the contrary, it's an operating as such a screening mechanism where it hasn't been allowing vessels through for most countries. Looks like it's a work that a deal with, I believe last time I checked with India, Pakistan and China, where certain vessels have been able to get through without interruption.

But otherwise, other national vessels haven't been able to get through the kind of pseudo-blockade, they're not calling it that, but I'll use in the colloquial sense that the straight that Iran has put up. There's also been some reports of mining being used to block parts of the waterway, which obviously poses a more enduring problem. And of course, repeated attacks against vessels going through various nationalities that presents a real risk, meaning that even if maybe the United States or Iran or the people will give assurances of the security, even if it may improve normally on the ground, until that's perceived by, among other people, maritime insurance underwriters and the people who ensure the vessels that transport oil and other goods through the straight.

They are not going to be able to financially likely to be in a position to move through, even though it physically is safety-wise, they may actually be able to do so. And this causing major global economic ramifications, oil prices have gone up precipitously, and are likely to continue climbing as a global stocks of oil drippled down. Remember, this has been a really fairly fast moving conflict, and those stocks are still insulating to some extent the actual crude oil prices, as they wear down at the oil price is going to continue to creep up even if the status quo remains more or less the same.

But also, particularly problematic for consumers in Europe and Asia, you're also seeing fertilizer prices, creep up and actually fertilizer stocks drop precipitously something that could have huge ramifications for agriculture in various parts of the world. Relatedly, people, particularly in Europe are concerned it could result in, among other things, migratory flows of human beings coming from African other areas affected by this, who, when facing agricultural shortages, have in the past, sometimes pushed in immigration into Europe and other parts of the world, causing political complications and other humanitarian complications there.

I think hopefully that captures some of the big dynamics around this. Talk to us about what we know about how the United States and Israel and other countries have been approaching trying to liberate the straight where it's fallen short.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good kind of scene setter. Let me take it in three different pieces kind of quickly. So the first one is what's going on in terms of red, right? Like what Iran is doing, what its capabilities are, what it intends to do. The second is what our capabilities are to respond and what we're trying to do and the third is that international peace that you highlighted. So just as a kind of overall, I am a little surprised by the administration's admission that it's not really been prepared for what Iran is doing in the straight, because

“listen, this scenario of a potential U.S. Iran conflict has been played out in war games and tabletop exercises for years and after decades.”

And I'm just talking on classified here obviously. And in every single one of those situations, the potential scenario of a closure of the straight of hormones or at least some sort of

disruption of the freedom of navigation has been a pretty prominent piece of that. So this has been a noble no for a really long time. It's been predicted for a very long time. And the fact that we clearly did not plan for it or didn't take it seriously is a little baffling to me. Also, in 2019-2020, folks may recall that we had a similar, although obviously not to the same extent, kind of tit-for-tat escalation in the straight of hormones in the Persian Gulf. I'll come back in a second to how we handled it at the time that our national peace becomes relevant here.

This was in the first Trump administration, so some elements that we're seeing today are not ancient history. We don't need to go back to the 1980s even to kind of have an idea of what Iran might be willing to do.

This all happened in the first Trump administration. And at the time, the Iranians were already planning to try to bypass the straight of hormones for their energy to export their oil.

We're building toward that goal, and obviously have made some progress doing that. So look, last week CNN reported that Iran has not even used 100% of the capabilities it has to try to block the straight of hormones. At the time, it put it at 80 to 90% as probably lower now. But in any case, they've maintained 80 to 90% of their mind-laying capabilities. And that's just talking about minds, not talking about missiles and drones and other capabilities that they have. Clearly, we've been degrading a lot of these capabilities, but we've not fully eliminated them so far.

“And part of what Iran is trying to do here, as always, part of a hybrid warfare strategy, is to use these very cheap ways to kind of harass and respond to conventionally superior adversary, right?”

They are using minds like they do kind of drones, and that these are fairly cheap kind of things that they use. They're not tight-tech devices that they're using. And we have to then allocate resources, significant resources to counter these things. So Percy, our personal research service, Iran has about 6,000 minds of different types that they can use and they can deploy. Again, they are not even close to anywhere close to that. And so there is a lot more that can happen still to continue to sort of disrupt the freedom of navigation.

And in terms of what the U.S. capabilities are, I think it's important for folks to know that we have been deproyoritizing the kind of maritime mine countermeasures missions that as a navy for a long time, since the end of the Cold War, and especially in the Pascaba decades. Just last year, the navy decommissioned essentially half of its class of Aventor vessels and mine sweepers. And so now we have a few of them left. They're deployed in the Indo-Pacific.

And this raises the question, as always, this is the kind of RE goes on about trade-offs portion of the podcast.

“As always, raises the question of what are the trade-offs here, are we willing to repurpose assets that we have in the Indo-Pacific to send to the Middle East?”

And of course, that comes with kind of policy considerations that need to be taken into account. Do currently have the total combat ships that are deployed in the region. They're doing some of those kind of maritime mine countermeasure missions at work, but they're not quite the same without going into the kind of rabbit hole of what those capabilities are specifically. So this all brings us to the Allies and Partners piece, right? We have a capability gap here. We have allies and partners who do have those capabilities, specifically in Europe, and that's partially why I think the administration and the president specifically have been asking allies to step in.

We did this again. Last time this happened in 1920 with the International Mayor of Times Security Construct, IMSC for short, where the first Trump administration galvanized allies and partners, a number of them to come and help in the state of hormones.

And we could really benefit from their capabilities. And this is something that you know, I think gets missed a lot is that there are these niche capabilities that some of our allies have that we've been deprioritizing and this is precisely the type of moment where we need them.

“Yeah, there seems like a big learning curve on this that we are seeing the Trump administration experience in real time.”

And that this is a military operation they appeared to have taken with, you know, to some extent years of advance planning on the hypothetical level that the United States has done about a conflict with Iran. But in reality, relatively short notice, we know there are concerns about Europeans about lack of consultation. We know this got ramped up over the course of a few weeks where we saw this massive mobilization take place in the Persian Gulf. And then execute unlike in the Western hemisphere, even you saw this massive mobilization that ultimately culminated in the relatively discrete and limited intervention, if not still very consequential intervention in Caracas in January.

Here it's rapidly has rapid build up and then rapid deployment of this huge military operation with massive regional consequence that seems so foreseeable.

It's really kind of extraordinary that the administration didn't come in with a more concrete plan about how to address this. That's that I also query whether the Europeans aren't catching themselves in a bit of a trap because I don't really see a way out for them. I mean, here's the way I am thinking about this and trying to figure out what their kind of calculus is here. They suffer very directly from the straight-of-war moves being closed. They definitely needed to get open again for a variety of reasons.

Oil prices, everybody kind of needs that.

“I think they're moderately more reliant directly in oil flows to the horror moves than, you know, the United States is but still. The whole global oil economy needs the prices to come back down.”

Fertilizer much more direct. Other things much more directly impact Europe that are going to be a concern. They also are in this situation where the alternative proposal that seems to be on the table about how you get chipping through is in, you know, modified version of kind of the earnest will effort. I was done doing the tanker wars in 1980 and 1988, which would entail having a bunch of shippers reflect their vessels as U.S. vessels to get the protection from the U.S. Navy.

The downside of that is that when you reflect as a U.S. vessel, the U.S. gets a degree of regulatory control over those vessels.

The plus side is that the United States feels like it can then extend and exercise, you know, military authority to extend self-defense to you. So if this is what you're doing and you're worried about, well, do we want to give the United States a huge amount of leverage over, you know, key shipping assets that are traversing this part of the world. And then also involved in other parts of our global economy and global trade, that's not an ideal outcome either. So it does seem to me like a better outcome in this would be if Europe were to participate in some capacity to either escort its own vessels through.

Or perhaps otherwise avoid the need to completely reflect maybe some sort of like collective self defense effort or something else like that that they could get on board with. That you either with the executive branch or maybe with legislative approval kind of there's legislation about this being debated in the hell.

“I'm not sure what they're holding out for exactly the one thing I can think of is I think they think maybe that if they were to come in now, it would allow the administration to extend or double down on the broader military campaign.”

But that if they hold out a little bit, this is the big pressure point in the administration and it may force the administration to say actually and is real to say actually, okay, we're going to go to the negotiating table, we're done with our military campaign, let's wind this up. And then diplomacy can come in and offer a more lasting solution, which will not come from just you know, reflecting vessels and moving it through the straight of our moves that still leaves the broader conflict. Does that sound maybe right to or are you or Natalie you jump here if you have thoughts like I just can't really figure out exactly what the European.

What the Europeans medium term game plan is if they have one, they may just be still figuring it out because these are all still fast moving events. Yeah, I want to add one question on top of that question, I think are you are by far the best situated to respond to this in a pressure. But I wondered also and this is really somewhat of a factual question, but I had read that Iran is selectively letting ships through and that even with the selections that it's making it's not totally consistent in. To which flagged ships.

So I'm wondering to what extent part of the European calculus might be that if they stay disengaged from the conflict. They might be able to negotiate. Or perhaps as a broader political unit with Iran to sort of get some sorts of exemptions and query whether that makes any sense given that some of the initiatives that Iran is undertaking are things like mines that would be hard to be able to negotiate your way through, but is could that be a part of the calculus as well. I think that's definitely part of it. I do think there are just a lot of different considerations floating in the minds of policymakers in and you're right now in NATO and among probably original partners too.

Pro this intervention in Iran and I think there will be a lot of pressure on policymakers throughout Europe if they decide to intervene on the site of the United States.

Adding to that is the fact that the United States is not particularly popular with a lot of public opinion currently in Europe right and in light of just kind of everything that's been going on all the tensions that have been dominating the transatlantic relationship.

“And then I think there is maybe also an element of they want to impose a cost on the United States for its coercion over the past few months, right?”

We're just a few weeks after the Greenland crisis and that may seem like it's siloed in the minds of US policy makers, but I don't think that is siloed in the minds of Europeans, right? Because it was a really acute crisis that I think we're dismissing a little bit on the side of the Atlantic because it was a few months ago, we're used to new cycles just being kind of crazy these days, so you know, we're moving on.

They haven't moved on from that and I don't think they're going to move on from that and then you add to that, you know, Scott, you laid out the issue of the consultations.

The reason why we do the hard work of quite the diplomacy normally on the front end of events is so that we have support when we are actually in the middle of things. And it's not clear to me that the administration has been doing that work that you know, they haven't been consulting with the Europeans with NATO allies. Maybe a bit more so would regional partners, but you can't not do any of the consultation put them in front of the attack on plea and then come out and say, now we need your capabilities and by the way, we're not even asking we are demanding quote unquote, right?

So I think at some point the domestic cost coupled with the fact that it just doesn't seem like if you if you're Europe from the European perspectives. We're just saying yes to the United States, it doesn't guarantee that next week you're not going to get tariffs, you're not going to get threats of another kind of annexation of your territory that you're not going to get another war in Cuba or wherever, where you're going to be asked to kind of intervene.

“And so the cost and benefits, I think, just don't match up here, but that I mean, I'm sure there's other considerations as well, but yeah, what do you guys think?”

I think that last point that Ari made is the essential one, which is that there is no safe harbor for Europe.

And there's no amount of working with the administration that is going to insulate them from the next outrage, the next Munich, the next and they've figured this out over time that you can kind of love bomb them for a while. And you can rope a dope and you can, you know, step in and pretend he doesn't mean what he says about Ukraine and about NATO and that, but eventually he's going to get to Greenland anyway. And so if you can't prevent him from behaving like him by being nice, then what is the value of being nice?

And the answer is it's not like actually worth having your ships targeted, your military assets rather than American military assets, getting the United States out of a mess that it did not consult you about getting into.

“And so what is the value of stepping up for the United States right now? And I think the answer is objectively, there isn't any.”

And Europeans, you know, talk like they have potatoes in their mouths all the time, but they're not stupid, you know, and you can, you can make fun of the mush that they sound like they speak in, which from an American point of view is very. You can tell it's lunchtime because Ben's doing so much of a strange food metaphors that none of us are quite following these mush mush eating potato loving the Europeans. No, I mean, as I said before. Yeah, if anybody who has dealt with European diplomacy knows the drive for consensus makes them sound like they're not saying anything because often they're not.

And it's very easy to make fun of it, but the fact of the matter is that these are pretty hard headed diplomats and they know what they're doing. And there's absolutely no reason for them to step up for us right now, and so they won't, and they're not, and nobody should be surprised by that. So I'll say, I'm not, I disagree with the fundamental premise.

And I think in two to three weeks, we're going to see some degree of European involvement.

I don't think it's going to be an offensive operations in Iran at all, that's certainly not the case.

“But we've already seen the European position like with the UK in particular, in some extent Spain, I believe, although there's still a lot of confusion around Spain's exact position.”

Where, you know, the UK has said, and this isn't at all inconsistent, even though it's been interpreted that way by the press in, frankly, by the White House, some extent. They said, look, we're not going to back this operation, you can't use our bases to do it. Then when Iran started hitting a bunch of other countries of the region and started sending drones at UK air bases in Cyprus, they said, okay, well, you can use British air bases for defensive strikes in response to those actions by Iranians.

Now, you know, how big is the delta between the two?

I think it's likely actually quite substantial if I, if I understand what the UK is saying, what they think they're allowed to pursue, which is much more specific response to those specific actions. Maybe this is covering up for something less substantial, or you know, a narrower delta, a more of a greater capitulation, to what the United States wants to do, but I kind of doubt it, because Darmar is under that sort of domestic pressure.

“But I think that really gets at like the fundamental cost of what this is showing to demonstrate for the United States, which is, you really need to this trade open.”

Europe has every incentive to actually help the United States do so, except the domestic politics.

Somehow President Trump has made it toxic for their own politics, for the leaders of who is traditionally in the United States closest allies,

to take even relatively limited action that is in their own economic benefit, because it is aligned with the United States and is a major foreign policy endeavor that nobody agrees with. And frankly, even if they consulted with European leaders, probably European publics would be quite skeptical of this, but at least if they consulted, they would have created the appearance or the sense that they somehow cared. And that European leaders may have said, okay, we understand we don't agree with this, but at least you talked to us, we saw it coming, we thought about ways to square it, and they may have, you know, some basis for thinking they may be willing to take on a little more political risk to participate.

Instead, it's really like, I think kind of a zero, some loss for all parties involved, except for maybe Iran. For the simple reason that this is going to go on longer, the economic pain is going to get everywhere.

“The only thing this really drives towards is that maybe this will push the United States and Israel to, and mostly the United States, to end their campaign earlier, which is Iran's main goal, that may be better for the rest of the world as well.”

But like, you know, frankly, the Trump administration's poor diplomacy, falling diplomacy has really put the United States in a bad position. When your allies can't do things that are in their own interests, that is a really bad sign about how you position yourself, vis-à-vis the rest of the world. And it just seems like Trump's doubling down, because what does he say? He says, we don't really need a math draw. If you don't need a math draw, why are you talking about it? It's just, it's, it's, it's really extraordinary. I feel like it's being understated how extraordinarily weak a moment this is for the United States.

I don't disagree with anything you said Scott, and I do think that there are scenarios under which we'll see a bit perhaps the euros kind of leaning in a bit more. And part of that involves the Iranian response, right? If the Iranian response entails things like hitting Jewish community centers on European soil. That is going to change the calculation. I think a little bit in Europe. And then to your other point, you know, the president is not wrong that they have their economic interests as well. So yeah, I'm not saying that 100% of the allies will say no thanks, but I do think that there will be significant caveats, and this will be a lot harder than it would have been if the administration had just done the quiet and to Ben's point frustrating work of consulting.

And you know, making sure that it brought the allies along instead of kind of on the back end saying, hey, we created this thing. Join the mess or we're going to, you know, withdraw from NATO, which by the way, I mean, I think we'll get back to this in a second. He's also threatening to do so, you know, that is not explicitly, but implicitly. So, you know, that's also part of the issue here. Yeah, I mean, the other part that I think also gets lost in this though is the compliance with international law part, and like what I'm tends to as an international lawyer, but I think it's true.

If you had done this conflict in a different way and framed your actions in a way that tries at least to nod towards international legal frameworks, it makes it a lot easier for these European allies to involve. If you don't care for the United States, part of the reason you comply with international law, big reason United States does traditionally is because it helps the rest of the world get on board what you're doing as legitimate or at least not as fundamentally illegitimate. Instead, now they just release an article 51 letter, which makes it case under international law of self defense, and for the record, I think there is a case under national law for self defense.

It's harder for the scale of military operations they're pursuing, honestly, but you look at like, you know, targeted actions is real has a case that it has been in an armed conflict with Iran for a while.

That is at least credible or not, you know, clearly in bad faith.

“And that is something that states can work around and say, okay, we may not agree with this part of it, but it means that because we understand you're still not trying to kick the rest of the U.N. charter system.”

Out of bed, we can still play ball with at least around the margins in ways that don't directly involve us. You just don't have that here, that sort of engagement, or now it's coming somewhat very late. I wouldn't be surprised as article 51 letter got filed because somebody at the State Department finally said, you would might help with your opinions. That's one article 51 letter two weeks later about why what you're doing is because it's with their national argument that was there and has been there this whole time, the exact argument they ended up rolling out for all its flaws, it's better than the argument, but, you know, it is, it really, I think illustrates that sort of problem.

So I want to talk about more about the European side of us, but let's save that for a little bit because that's our second topic, let's zoom in a little bit more on the straight here.

What about like the domestic pressures this puts on Trump? How strong is he feeling those? Ben, I'll come to you first on this and then I'm curious you're Natalie and already your views as well.

“Like, what are the pressure points Trump is feeling at this point about this broader conflict? Because it does seem like the straight of removes has become the tip of that spear, right?”

That's really up against his jugular in terms of feeling pressure about this and that has lots with economy, a lot to do with midterms, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, how big a factor is that and what are other factors that may be pushing the U.S. trajectory of the policy in the space? Well, I think the first factor and of course we're speculating here because we're talking about what Trump is feeling which is involves, you know, occupying space in his head, which is always a danger.

“It's always a dangerous thing to do. But based on what he says, I think you can infer a few pressure points. The first is failure.”

He has gotten used to, you know, these lightning blitz things like you snap your finger and there's an overnight raid in Venezuela and all of a sudden the president of Venezuela is in the southern district of New York. And there's a new president of Venezuela who you claim is in the palm of your hand and for all I know maybe she is, right? And you are used to boats in international waters that don't fight back and you blow them up, and then you say that they were drug boats with trend in Iraq and they don't contradict you, however much you may be bullshitting.

And all of a sudden you, you know, you've convinced yourself that the military is hyper cautious and they always tell you you can't do things and then you do things and it works.

And you do this with a country of 93 million people and a fairly serious set of military capabilities and that is strategically postureed in the middle of a highly sensitive and volatile region. And you're surprised to find that it doesn't magically resolve in the direction that you kind of fantasize that it would. And that the hyper cautious generals who were saying, you know, we can take out the supreme leader and a few bunch of people around him, but there's this other architecture of the Islamic Republic that is going to be more resilient and they have a lot of missiles.

You know, so the first thing is that, you know, you kind of convinced yourself in this pre Hitler pre Stalin grad kind of way that you can do anything and everybody will tell you know and then it'll all magically work because your instincts are that good. And, you know, just as that wasn't true for Napoleon at the end of the day and it wasn't true for Hitler at the end of the day, it's not true for Donald Trump at the end of the day and by the way he has a shorter leash than either of the other two.

And so that's the number one is just he's not used to things not working. I think a subcategory of that is that when things don't work, they have a way of biting you in the ankle and causing pain and the streets of Formus is one of those things protracted military engagement is another one right Americans don't actually like protracted military engagements.

And it literally ones that they didn't choose and that they didn't want to be involved in in the first place.

But, you know, when they're protracted military engagements that involve significant economic pain and acute like in a way that people are really sensitive to like gas prices going up right that's very noticeable and I think he is responsive to the markets in a way that he's not responsive to just about anything else.

And so I do think there's an an an a kind of immediate negative feedback loop associated with the Straits of Formus and with protracted conflict with Iran more generally and then finally I do think he's very aware that there are midterms coming up that he like everybody else must know that he is not.

He's likely to do well in and so that he's playing this game against a ticking clock that you know does run out at some point and really could end up in a situation in which.

You know the Democrats have the capacity to impeach him and they have enough votes in the Senate to make that impeachment painful in terms of.

“And so I think there's a lot of stuff going on but it all has its roots in the fact that he thought he could be something quick and lightning and that is not the way.”

This conflict should have ever been expected to play out or that was ever likely to play out.

I mean I guess the one response I have to the premise of that Ben is that it's a very convenient thing then if you haven't articulated what the objective of your operation even is right because the option is always open. If you haven't articulated an end game to just be done with it all and hope that the responses either not so great after you have thrown in the towel that you really suffer huge cost and see the consequence of having initiated this or you get to place the blame on someone else which is obviously there are lots of candidates that are being lined up for the United States to place the blame on with respect to this conflict.

“I think the political pressures are very much there as you say but I don't know how much they will be activated if this option remains open to just kind of declare victory on whatever.”

This is a very good particular goal is put forth for why we did this and went great look at us we showed Iran we destroyed a bunch of their capacity is we really debilitated their nuclear program that by the way we had already debilitated with that operation several months ago but no really this time we actually did.

And we can move on gas prices please return to normal when they don't because it's not that simple and there's a delayed response from the market for all the reasons we've talked about.

The blame somewhere else so the problem with that I think is first of all Iran gets a vote whether there's a ceasefire and the fact that you declare victory and stop bombing things does not mean that the streets of Hormuzus open and Iran actually has a vote in that conversation.

“The thing is if you as Donald Trump not you as Natalie Orpid decide that you're throwing in the towel and going home which is a very attractive option I'm sure.”

The Israelis are still getting rocketed and so if Iran does not want to stop you really risk putting yourself in the position of abandoning Israel which though that would not make sorrow create sorrow in the American left would create sorrow and anger in parts of Trump's base. I would by the way infuriate the Israelis who actually do have as Scott says a long term on conflict that they rely on our support with respect to and so I don't think it's quite as easy to turn this off. But without some degree of making Iran cry on cold Iran has to want to turn it off too and that of course raises the question with of which Iran which is given how little I understand the internal machinations of the Islamic Republic much less how few of those machinations.

Many of us understand now that we've killed so many people and it's not clear who's making decisions I don't even know how to begin to evaluate that.

Given these dynamics the one thing I'll say just add to that it's again this is an era area where allies historically have been and will be here very key the Europeans have a whole broader range of economic to some extent like cultural ties because they have so much more education transfers and Iranian populations in Europe. They have lots of different levers they can use and frankly lots of different inroads they can use to communicate with different parts of Iran and of course you have allies like Oman that's traditionally played the role of a major interlocutor with Iran and other than one or two events early in the conflict largely has not been targeted by Iran as I believe.

“So you know really I last time I checked it's been a week or so since I've checked the statement but last time I checked that foreign minister was very much still urging parties to come back to the table.”

I'm certainly will play that role and help sort through you know who's in control but like that's the real risk you run when you do things including. Today I think today or yesterday we've got the news that they'd killed Ali LaRazani the kind of national security advisor essentially the person who kind of been in charge of at least. People thought was remained of the security apparatus. When you take out so many senior people on security apparatus organizations like this they fracture.

The people holding the guns don't go away they become decentralized and that becomes much harder negotiate with here. I mean that's always been a critique of.

The people in charge and if it's on you know I'm going conflict it's paired with dramatic targeting across the board to eliminate capacity as well. Which we've seen you know Gaza and Lebanon are seeing again in Lebanon now and does I think that's we're seeing in Iran.

“But you think of other case with the United States is try this like in Iraq with the cost of salamani killing.”

So forget about that is that led to like months of hugely spiked hostilities by Iraqi. She had backed Iran backed. She had militia groups in Iran and Iraq excuse me that really destabilizes situation and really precipitated. Eventually it ultimately became the US troop withdrawal. It was not as much of it like to be trumpeted to everyone including like Joe Kent when his resignation letter a few days ago the salamani killing was far from clear to me like a strategic victory.

So I'm not clear to me to actually benefit anything and a big reason of that as despicable person as he was and a big reason for that is because.

It eliminated the one control valve that you could negotiate with over a lot of these other actors until they are do you see it reestablished under gay control and I'm worried they've kind of put themselves in a similar situation here with Iran itself. There is that sound right to you. I mean, how should we worry to be about us having diminished Iran's infrastructural capacity enough that there isn't one Iran we can negotiate with enough at least if we're looking for 100% cessation of the risk against everything from shippers to Israel.

Yeah, before I answer that I do want to kind of emphasize the point that you guys just made about the importance of allies and partners and all of this and this is goes back to the whole notion that you know multilateralism is hard right negotiating with allies can be deeply frustrated. At times I can tell you first hand I have a few gray hairs from from that, but it is important because they have things that we don't have and in especially in this case, you know, we haven't had diplomatic relations really with Iran since 47 years ago.

Sure, there have been kind of direct negotiations at different points, but we don't have a presence really there that is direct. We have been really had that much of insight into a lot of things and we get all of that from allies and partners. So when you kind of try to do it the easy way by prioritizing unilateralism, you're kind of given up that capacity, that capability and I think that's really unfortunate. In terms of the Iranian regime, I do think, you know, I think it's too early to say on a lot of these things, but the current trajectory we're on.

“I think takes care of the problem in a cosmetic way, if you will, it's replacing a few individuals at the top, but the fundamental infrastructure that the architecture that the regime is based on is still there.”

I think we talked about this a few weeks ago when we did the kind of big rat-sec episode on Iran, but part of the concern is that we are actually allowing for the more radical parts of the regime, which I know is kind of baffling to people because this is already a but radical regime, but there are more radical portions of it elements of it. And those are the people who are now coming out on top currently. Now, I'm urging caution because we're not at the end of this yet, and the president has clearly indicated that he's willing to kind of keep going until, you know, it's he deems necessary, essentially, and he'll take, you know, he'll take out or we'll take out individuals who kind of succeed the people who are being killed.

So I'm not sure where the ships are going to fall by the time everything stops, but right now we are not on a good trajectory in terms of people who are going to be more willing to talk to us who are going to be more moderate in some of the major issues that we worry about.

Do we know where it is? Not publicly, I don't know what folks have insight into, but no, and that is a problem. And it's a problem that we are probably reinforcing the regime's view, now that the previous operator is gone and is replaced by his more radical and even less kind of, you know, more unhinged son that there will be a decision at some point to resume a nuclear weapons program. And it is fundamentally a really bad thing that is going to just make all of the other issues we have with Iran, even worse, regardless of whether we kind of, you know, degrade their missile capability, their drone capability, et cetera, et cetera.

The nuclear piece is really the piece that kind of, you know, makes everything far worse. And it's not clear to me that the administration has a response to that, right? They keep, it's not even clear that that's really an objective anymore. If it is, it's kind of down the list from all the other things, like we're more focused on the Iranian Navy and the IRGC Navy, then we are in the nuclear program and that is just baffling to me because the Iranian naval capabilities are not the things that I'm the most concerned about.

And I realize that sounds funny because we just spent the past 45 minutes talking about Iran might need this rate of formulas, but fundamentally the nuclear program is going to make everything much worse.

So we've blended our first two topics a bit, but I want to pivot back to the second talk for a run out of time. That's this question of Europe.

“And specifically, I want to talk about the move a little bit away from the Iran context because I think you were the one to point it out.”

You know, we are still in the shadow of the Greenland debate. And I will say I have been amazed by, as somebody who's watched it's pretty closely for, you know, a decade or two at this point, about the shift in tenor of European perspective since Greenland. It's subtle because it does have that much mouth sort of a characteristic that Ben noted. You know, Europeans tend to be fairly diplomatic, generally speaking, particularly when they're approaching things like relationship with difficult relationship with difficult allies, which the United States has become at this point.

But it's been pretty remarkable.

Some of the strong coordinate action in regard to Greenland shortly after it.

“And now around Iran, a complicated issue set, I think that many of the states genuinely have mixed feelings about because many of them have recognized Iran is a legitimate problem before and it's nuclear program.”

Remember, the G7 backed the limited strikes against Iran's nuclear program in the summer. Did not do it this time, can it Australia did, but both even then with a little bit of cabinning, but the other G7 states did end.

So, I'm wondering how far this goes. I mean, we've heard talk of the idea of a more independent defense Europe repeatedly over the last few decades.

More often from Americans than Europeans, in many cases, because Americans want to lower the burden of defending Europe, at least some Americans do. And this is including many people in President Trump's camp, at least in terms of strategic user, a lot of people who share that goal. And that's of course part of what Trump has trumped in the past, getting them to come to 5% defense spending. But in my mind, at least the political rhetoric seems to reflect a real shift in approach that makes me view these things much more credibly and real.

It's not just Europe. You also have Mark Carney and Australia talking about Canadian Australian security cooperation. Literally, of course, in the world united only by the fact that they're commonwealth states and both traditional United States now facing a slightly different situation.

“But Natalie, let me come to you on this, because I know you are somebody who, you know, as follows European politics is something to stand like, you know, do you see the same shift in tenor?”

And how far do you think it goes? What are the limits of the Europe's ability to pivot towards Europe? For lack of better way to describe it, towards trying to develop an indigenous defense capability that can at least, you know, compensate for one that might be less committed or reliable on the US side than it might have seemed, you know, 5 or 10 years ago. Yeah, I think there are a couple of things that affect the feasibility of that. I mean, one and Ari would be able to speak to this component of it better than I, but it takes a long time to build up defense capacity and a logistics sense.

And there's a lot of infrastructure in place from NATO that presumably could be sort of translated over to more of an EU structure. But it won't be a fully capable unit yet, right? The United States is full withdrawal from it would be a major blow and there would just be a long runway of needing to fill the gaps that it leaves. I think the things that have really dramatically changed though is more and more people both on the political side and on the general population of Europe side, believe what the United States is saying and believe that they might leave and believe that they are no longer, they we are no longer reliable partner.

And I think Greenland was a real, real signal of that to people I've spoken with a lot of European friends, so this is anecdotal, but also just reading the news, there's just so much outrage about Greenland and it is as Ari said it's it's not something that is fading from memory the way that it is for Americans and it's not something that's being written off as like, oh, you know, Trump learned that they're going to be things in the Arctic now and Greenland's really big on a map and therefore Greenland.

And that never reminds complicated, you know, that that was a signal of like the United States thinks that it is going to just blow up the entire international order by invading a sovereign nation and I don't think that that I think that represents a fundamental shift that maybe the symbol of it or the catalyst of it, but I don't think that that sense of unity over values is ever going to come back, at least certainly not in the short term. Another piece of it that may serve as a limitation but may also be evolving is the difficulties that Europe and the EU always has in becoming a unified unit when it has a lot of political diversity domestically and between nations that are member states of the EU.

It's a very complicated politics domestically for a lot of the countries that make up the EU, but there's been discussion, you know, over the course of the last many years of yes on the one hand there is sort of increasing power in many countries of far right political parties and that really changes the calculus of how internationalized European countries can think of themselves as. But it it also there's been sort of speculation and discussion of will that change as Europe sees the costs domestically of Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine does it suddenly seem to be the case that oh, maybe there's a point to the need for robust defense and that it's not just that the absence of the United States is bad because there's no longer security guarantee, but I think there was a genuine belief.

A lot of Europeans that the United States's security guarantee was not even necessarily as important as Americans assumed that everyone believed it to be because that was representative of a more Saber rattling world and the you know glory of the. World War II international order was going to be that countries would have find a different way of dealing with each other than a resort armed conflict for which the United States of security guarantee would be so crucial.

“So I think it's it's really difficult to tell whether those domestic pressures that would in turn limit member states is ability to up their cooperation with each other across.”

National borders might shift if public opinion is changing enough to reconsider how internationalized political leaders are able to be because of domestic political pressures.

Then maybe there will be more of a move toward meaningful steps toward a European only defense mechanism. Yeah, I want to pull you into one particular part of this that I was really struck by mostly because of the. Seriousness with which it seemed to be offered, although I'm not sure people are willing to accept that and that is the nuclear vision that we saw French president manual Macron, before word which resembles a lot to me kind of what the Eisenhower era nuclear policy in the United States, which was we're going forward to play nuclear weapons then it was US weapons on ally in allied bases to some extent, I think we found out much later actually on allied planes at times with kind of a dual turn key sort of activation method.

That's my big recollection from recent last 20 years or so revelations now in the French model they're saying look we might be able to do something like this have expand French nuclear capacity so that's been a point of tension with the United States and the countries in the past but French France you know is very much nuclear power. That's the times in the past expressed interest in expanding its capacity is a nuclear power leaning towards that but doing in a way that's you know extends an umbrella around Europe something that the UK could be in a position to do as well hasn't been as lean forward on that.

That nuclear element is for Europe I think essential that is the essential element the Americans offer not just nuclear capacity but nuclear parity with Russia that's always been the main threat and the main edge United States offer the other ones but that's the big umbrella important one.

Thank you for bringing this up because I'm about to have a co-authored piece in law fair and soon on this particular topic so yeah so present macron laid out I think you know he's been building toward this moment for a few years now since essentially the beginning of his tenure.

“And what he laid out in the speech was much more I think comprehensive than what he had been alluding to before it is not as important to know a complete replacement for US extended deterrence and it is very much supposed to be additive to it.”

So far I think eight countries have agreed to part take in this construct that he's offering and he said that multiple other countries are there's ongoing conversations with other countries to bring them on board as well. But different ways that this could play out one of them would be to your point a kind of a UK France construct but that is going to be a little more challenging because the UK is much more reliance under the United States and for its nuclear weapons programs specifically.

So you know autonomy that France offers is going to be fairly different from what the UK would be able to offer.

You're correct to point out that the parity piece is not there for France right France the public estimates are way way lower in terms of the number of nuclear warheads that it has it also only has a diet it does not have the kind of the triad like the United States does have. But you actually don't necessarily need parity as much as you need the political credibility you should actually say what the triad is I'm sorry I should I should say what the triad is folks may remember a few years ago this was a question and one of the presidential debates and some individuals were not able to define it so that's essentially being able to use ground air and naval launched nuclear weapons.

So yeah, so you don't necessarily need to match if you're France the number of nuclear warheads that Russia has you need the credibility though to be able to showcase that you will be able to hold Russia at risk if it does use a nuclear weapon. I do think there's an important step forward I actually think it's a pretty positive step from the US perspective as well because having that additive not replacement for a US nuclear deterrent is actually a good thing and I think it is in line with what both Republican and Democratic administrations have been looking at which is to Natalie's point more autonomy in Europe to be able to kind of take care of European security while we shift our attention to other things.

“What the other things are obviously a point of debate at this point in the United States they weren't for a while, but I think a more kind of autonomous Europe is a positive thing.”

I do think that there are a number of challenges here. One is that Macron's term is going to end next year he's not able to seek reelection he's already completed he's going to be completing his two five year terms as as the French Constitutional asymptoteau according to polls as as we speak now the far right national rally is well positioned to win those elections. And the national rally has been much more skeptical both of Europe much friendlier to Russia and very traditionally opposed to this kind of construct that Macron is proposing in terms of not necessarily extended turns but kind of Europeanizing the French turn.

So unless Macron is able to actually make significant progress toward the realization of this construct I don't know that France will be able to make that much progress toward it after twenty twenty seven.

“I don't think we're going to see the same thing we see in the US now where every four years we like have these wide swings back and forth, but I think that the national rally is much more much less inclined to actually take positive steps toward it.”

I think part of it is a time crunch right now to make sure that they make enough progress before the elections in twenty twenty seven.

I should add though that Macron speech was very well crafted he was able to actually get quite a bit of support even from the national rally in the way he characterized the way that this program with this project would be implemented. And so he hasn't been getting as much pushback that he had previously so he did a good job of kind of making sure that he framed it as a you know the French nuclear deterrent will remain a French nuclear deterrent and you know kind of talking about how it would preserve command and control and so on so forth and would not necessarily be looking to kind of diversify that piece of it to European to other European allies.

So let us bring our focus to the home front for a little bit before we wind up our time to get the day.

It has been a rough few weeks in a lot of ways for the defense department what's a may call the Department of War but I will not we have seen both in one sense. The pursuit of a incredibly effective from a tactical perspective and operational perspective military operation. The degree of integration with Israeli forces on targeting intelligent sharing interoperability that's extraordinary. I campaign that's been able to wreak a extraordinary amount of damage against a party that was seen as a not a near purebinding strategy imagination but a substantial military power.

And wreak devastating devastating consequences particularly in the first 24 hours of the conflict you know I've seen reports saying that they had over a thousand targets in the first 24 hours.

“Some of that really lent itself to be able to quickly eliminate so much of its key military capacity.”

At the same time all that tactical success has not led to a lot of strategic success. It's not clear what the administration clearly was trying to achieve when it took this atmosphere on we haven't got straight clearly stated objectives. If the objective was to do anything other than aggravate the global economy trigger responses against allies against the region it's clear that they haven't accomplished yet because those have been the big main changes from this conflict. And then we have really really troubling cases like in the first 24 hours the fact that an American rocket appears to have targeted a girl school in southern Iran killing between 150 and 200 Iranian children. I have no doubt this was not an intentional targeting in the context of a choice made by policymakers to delivering knowing that this was a school.

“But the fact that happened is troubling you know such things do happen in conflict but we're getting reports now that this may have happened in part because of faulty intelligence that wasn't fully vetted.”

The may have been fed into some of the AI systems being used to do some of this targeting which didn't understand the extent to which was outdated or didn't identify it.

And certainly this is happening in a context where a lot of the mechanism and personnel that are intended to prevent and limit these residents to mitigate some of the harm that is inherent in warfare to civilians. I know you've been following this pretty closely you and I wrote about this a little bit in the context of the second strike on September 2nd in the context of the maritime strikes against, you know, two shipwrecked individuals which raises big law from conflict questions. So what you see some of the lessons for these past few weeks and what it shows about those campaigns, I mean how much of what we're seeing can we attribute to those degradation.

What are the consequences of it and to what extent are maybe what are we likely to see as things go on. And as you know two or three years in a Trump administration if it continues on this trajectory at the defense Department around civilian harm issues. I mean, I think there's a ton to unpack here, but I'll start with the vilification of the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement, which hexath has been making a number of statements about and ever since his confirmation hearings, frankly, as talked about how law and lawyers are just an impediment that is, you know, restricting American lethality and where this powerful military that needs to be unleashed.

So that the United States can realize its full power, et cetera, et cetera. And vilifying lawyers, vilifying the rule of law, thinking about it all that way, is disturbing enough.

“But let me take it back a bit because I think there is among many people and probably fairly a tendency to roll your eyes at the notion that lawyers are so important and law is so important.”

And a lot of people think well, it's war. What does law even have to do with anything? And they think that, you know, people like Scott and I are cute in our insistence on the law of war, but, you know, the law of war is itself merely in articulation of the idea that war is supposed to be for the purpose of accomplishing an objective. Right, the rules around, for example, not just indiscriminately murdering civilians is not just because that seems like a humane and moral thing to do. It's also because nobody really wants wars to last forever. And when you kill a bunch of civilians, unless you're really believing that the purpose of your conflict is collective punishment, which side note is itself unlawful.

Even setting that aside, it's pretty bad strategically for trying to ultimately end a conflict. You're just, I mean, this is a very obvious thing to say, but the more you kill civilians and have stories of, you know, innocent school children being murdered.

“The more you're incentivizing resentment and, you know, pushing people toward feeling a sense of justifiable grievance that innocent people were were killed.”

And all of these rules, niceties, whatever are based on the premise that if there's going to be a war should at least be effective, and it's not effective to just indiscriminately murder civilians.

So I want to say that as a rhetorical response to the hexaiths of the world who think that law is just, you know, an impediment because I disagree with the premise generally, but also he seems to the underlying message of that sort of rhetoric is that it should be okay to kill for the sake of killing because we can. We can go on these really cool military adventures and conduct these amazing operations and have this incredible technology and interoperability with the amazing capacity of the Israelis and conduct these operations and they're really cool.

“But it doesn't actually accomplish anything over the long term. This is not Call of Duty. This is international relations over time. So I think that's my, that's my little.”

I try upon that front. The, the other thing I'll say and then I'll pass it over to other people to be a little less of a salilic way is I think that the. The strike itself seems pretty clearly to me to be a demonstration of what happens when you fire all of the jags who are in place both within DOD and at the operational level DOD made a specific policy change allowing.

Commands to have more authority to conduct their own strikes, their own operations without having to get sign off from the White House, which means there are fewer layers of checks on.

“The operation whether a strike is lawful and whether it is wise these, you know, strategically wise and legal or, you know, two supper considerations presumably even hexaeth would care about the strategic value.”

Getting rid of lawyers including only at the operational level means that there aren't people in place to do things like what a legal check on an operation like this probably or at least maybe would have caught. In the vetting process the fact that the target was not correctly identified that it was based on old information because it would have had to do a pretty involved assessment of the proportionality and discrimination and the other principles of IHL that's part of the job. So our let me pull you into here because I know you worked on these issues in your time in the defense department, you know, my sense of it from my limited exposure to some of these issues is that a lot of what the Trump administration has pulled down under secretary hexaeth has been things that were intended to help reinforce an inculcata culture to embed these things.

And not sure, although I'd be curious about it, how much of the institutional mechanisms really change the checks that are formally in place.

And so far as you are still having people who are trained under the old system and will still be sensitive to some of these things the same thing way they were six months ago nine months ago. But that over time obviously as new personal come in they're not subject to the same training and to some extent to socialization and acculturation. You know, could decline and certainly is it going to improve like the way some of the measures the Biden administration put in place like this. Interfacts and it will come in then again, they also have the cultural impact which is raising these issues is something that is now, you know, likely perceived as a career liability for military lawyers and officers and people making decisions.

So, you know, how do you balance this, what are the real concerns here, like how concerned should we be about these sorts of actions and how does it intersect with operational mission like I'm struck particularly by the hit on this Iranian vessel outside of Sri Lanka right, which was not engaged in sort of hostile activity. I think international law would say you're in a armed conflict with another state if you buy that and you know, I say that's its position with collective self defense and Israel it's therefore in basically in a armed conflict or acting on Israel's behalf in a armed conflict answer on it can target this vessel.

So how does all another guy or somebody who's wrestled with this from within government.

“Yeah, I do think there's kind of an institutional piece to it and you're right to point out there's also a cultural element to it right the administration has been dismantling different parts of this architecture that were set up.”

To now least point not because it was the you know fru-fru thing of like you know pleasing the lawyers and doing the morally correct thing although it was also that. But because it made strategic sense right a general rank of which to is the you come commander I'm going to quote him because he said I think he really you know if you don't want to hear from the lawyers and from you know the civilians who kind of did this year from the you come commander. What I've observed over the course of studying air power and history is that anytime you attack a civilian population usually end up finding that it it just heartens their resolve.

And we're seeing that already like we I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to characterize the sentiment of 90 million Iranians in a diverse country.

But we're already seeing reporting across multiple outlets that you know are showing that people who within Iran who may have been actually kind of sympathetic to this action who may have seen it as us.

“Coming and helping them kind of you know freedom cells away from their oppressors are now turning against us because of the civilian casualties because of the fact that we're hitting cultural sites that are important to them.”

And so you know that was part of the reason why we set up this architecture at the defense department. So that you know we would have that moral high ground that would allow us to kind of you know meet our strategic objectives. It's one of them but there are other pieces out that in the office of the Secretary of Defense for policy. Under Secretary of Defense for policy we had this kind of that was called shimmer the civilian harm mitigation response that was essentially dismantled fairly early on in the administration.

And to Natalie's point the jags being fired pretty early on in the administration all of these things are institutional. But they're also cultural they show to service members. They show to the civilian workforce within the department that this is not only not a priority anymore. It's actually like bad for your career right it is something that we don't want people to be thinking about and it is part of Secretary hexettes kind of you know ongoing wrap about replacing.

The problem is that it is not that it's not that it's not that it's not making a strategy right that does not necessarily allow you to meet your operational and goals.

“You're just because you can't do something that doesn't necessarily mean you should even if that's the case legally because what we do in conflict can backfire can come back and it can be something that adversaries do to us right.”

So from the perspective of feeding into propaganda from adversaries from the perspective of kind of you know showing that we have pushed the envelope with allowed this is acceptable behavior. I'd be engaging in those things just because we have the capability to do it. We have the United States military has a lot of capabilities. It can do a lot of things. It doesn't mean that necessarily should do those things. I just want to put some meat on some of the bones that both Ari and Natalie have articulated here.

This is data from a paper that Shane Harris wrote for the Hoover institution a number of years ago. So during World War II it took a fleet of 1,000 B-17 bombers with a total crew of 10,000 men to reliably destroy a ground target in the access. A generation later in Vietnam it took 30 F-4 fighter bombers each with two people flying it to reliably destroy a target. So that's a 99% decline in manpower. Then comes the invention of precision guided munitions. A single smart bomb could do the work of 1,000 planes during World War II.

And by the time we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, one pilot in one plane could destroy six targets. Now of course you don't even need the pilot in the plane because you can fly them on man or with Tomahawk or whatever.

If you're not speaking headset the in gobble D-Gook the ability to not destroy an entire city because you only want to destroy one building in it.

“That is an increase of lethality right it's a decrease of the total amount of death that you have to impose in order to be effective.”

Now, I want to say that it is wrong of Pete Hagshath and a lot of people like him to talk about that as sort of niggling legal compliance.

That's called effectiveness and whether you channel whether you look at the people who don't die because you're being effective, which is the fundamental demand of the law of armed conflict.

That you think about the people that you could avoid killing, right, that you focus on the people who are actually lawful targets.

“Or whether you think about that in terms of you're just going to be a more effective military.”

You're talking about the same thing and there is something so I mean I share Natalie's kind of visceral allergy to the dismissal of the rhetoric of legality.

But I want to focus here on something else when headsets contrasts legality and legality, he's moronically wrong. Legality and legality are the same thing if you know what you're talking about. And it's actually nobody who drops bombs thinks the US Army Air Corps was more effective over Tokyo than it is now in Iran. Nobody could think that. And I would argue it isn't even more lethal. We never managed to kill the Japanese high command. We do manage to take out the Iranian high command. Well, it's just 100,000 Tokyo residents that we're not killing now.

“And so I really think there's something like it is right and proper for Natalie to focus on how malevolent and evil this is.”

But I also don't want to drop the point that it's stupid and really kind of illiterate about the history of weaponry, the history of what we thought was possible in terms of precision targeting and why we do precision targeting, which is partly because we're complying with the law, but it's partly because we really want to kill the person over here. And we want to make sure we get him and we're good at aiming. You know, like that that is not it has humanitarian implications and they're really really important, but it's also about effectiveness.

Yeah, and that's the point I was trying to make earlier with saying that the premise of international law, the purpose of these niceties of law is exactly that it's that that war shouldn't last forever. One of the ways to make sure that war doesn't last for generations upon generations is to make sure you don't perpetuate the sense of need to continually combat an enemy and continue to make more enemies for more generations of people who have watched their innocent loved ones and their children be murdered at schools.

And I think that to the effectiveness point, I mean, bad near exactly right, and I think it's wise to situate it in the historical context because it does make it clearer that the ability to do things with precision is better for actually achieving objectives. The other point I was trying to make though is it does concern me that hexaiths, rhetoric suggests she may actually disagree with you that lethality should mean effectively killing the people you want to kill to as a means of reaching your objectives of the war and may in fact just mean lethality in numbers and that's what really concerns me that whether or not that's what he actually means that some people are hearing it that way that it's just you know the more killing we can do the better because that's cool.

That's cool and look at all the cool machines we have, which is obviously not effective and we have our own very recent example of why it's not not effective.

Civilian deaths and so they weren't learning from them and so the deaths continued and then the United States stated a war in Afghanistan for 20 years and that is where.

“At least I think everyone would agree that that is not an effective use of the military or an effective military operation.”

Well, it is really an important to the topics we will no doubt revisit in the future but for now we are out of time but this would not be about security. Of course we do not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the weeks to come.

Natalie, what did you bring for us this week?

Well, this is quite a tone change from my previous statements. I brought a delightful thing for the people with small-ish children in their lives or who are looking for gift ideas for such children, which is a subscription. How to describe it cooking kit that my parents gave to my seven-year-old son for his birthday. It is called radish box and every month you get a very cute little box with three note cards containing recipes from a different country or cuisine tradition. It is usually timed for some holiday, so there was for the Lunar New Year, there were Chinese recipes. They also, this is really good for little kids, send along a little tool along with each kit because it is fun to get toys with your kitchen stuff.

So I am now in possession of a dumpling press for the Lunar New Year for her dumpling recipe. It is a great way to supplement your own kitchen, but it has been actually really delightful. We have a delicious sticky toffee pudding that I will probably bring into the office tomorrow because it was a gargantuan quantity and it should not be left alone in my home. It has little along with the recipes, has a little bit of information about the country and the tradition of the cuisine comes with an apron where you get to iron on little patches of the country that want to cook all the recipes in your box.

So it is very well curated for kids and the recipes that have actually been pretty good and very fun to do together. I love it. I have a little chef at home myself. My two-year-old now is definitely watching on a weekend I often turn on cooking videos on YouTube and on a living room I am trying to keep them quiet so my wife can sleep a little bit longer and my two-year-old has gotten into that now. So maybe this is in our future.

“What did you bring for us this week? I am going to continue on the culinary journey, although for adults I think, although children can also partake.”

They won't do, they never do.

So I was in Asia for two weeks and half of that was spent in Taiwan where I had a revelation. I went to a night market and had this bow at one of the indigenous stands there and I bid into it and it was a pork bow. And it had this pepper on there that was not like nothing I've experienced before. It had a little bit of citrus, a little bit of pepper and it just could have unfolding in my mouth. It was incredible. So anyway, I went on a journey, it's called Mountain Pepper or Megau, which I apologize to anyone who actually speaks Chinese for the lack of tones.

But I wanted a journey to try to acquire said pepper going all the way to a farmer's association where they just looked at me like this weird American who's showing up and mispronouncing this thing that is apparently kind of like obscure outside of a certain area. Anyway, I managed to acquire their entire stock of Megau, which I now have in my home and I plan on putting on everything going forward. So here's the Megau. I'm very curious. I want to check this out, bring some into the office. I will go next now. I've been have the last word here. I'm going to share a little bit of attack recommendation because I've got a lot of jealous looks and now it's mostly from Alan Rosenstein for my portable tech setup, which I've been doing some traveling lately. I've been doing some conferences.

“I've been working back and forth and some shops and I have a kit that I bring with me that I think I've mastered the portable work office kit and it's kind of amazing because it fits like in my hand most of the time.”

And if worst case in this slim bag, so here it is. Two recommendations in particular, I have an iPad and four whatever. That's not that interesting. But I do like it. It's cheap and easy. You don't need the pro. The import does it all. I just found this awesome iPad case that I traded in my own one for. That has a keyboard that separates off. So if you're very tall like me, you can take the iPad and hang it on something and watch it like I level. So you can actually use it in a usable way. It's kind of amazing and a little pocket for the sleeve and like nine different ways to stand it up.

I think a type on the keyboard and I don't have to like hunch my neck over like this, like I'm too tall to the next day work.

“And then this amazing anchor, which used to sponsor the podcast occasionally, come back to us anchor. I'm getting you free advertising.”

It's a great charger, 10k fusion built in cable charger with a little USB-C cable. It's in a little handle and you can plug it in the wall. So it's a charger and a battery pack. It's amazing.

So I just plug this in and charge my iPad right up, take it out of the wall, you don't even have to leave it plugged in. You can plug it in across the room and come back and get it. It's amazing. It's a great portable kit.

I'm recommending it for folks out there. Anchor, ERA, come back, sponsor the podcast. Why not? You can get some free advertising. But for now, I'll throw you one great products.

“And as I've gotten a lot of questions about this, I thought I'd share with listeners. I'll throw links into the show notes. Ben, now it is finally your turn. Bring us home. What do you have for an object lesson this week?”

Well, as you know, Scott, I do consider it a Shonda that lots of people in this country are not talking about what I'm wearing. And so every now and then I make it get ready with me video. I think the world doesn't have enough mid 50s kind of male midlife crisis get ready with videos. And I'm personally on a campaign to fix that problem.

“And so this morning I got up and I knew I had my court date and it was you know a high stakes litigation. It was going to go all the way to the Supreme Court.”

And so I did a get ready with me video edited, of course, by the fabulous Catherine Pompeo, who edits all of my fashion videos. And you can find it on my Instagram page. And on my sub stack and I will say, you know, please do share it with comments about how cool my sartorial choices are weather of Ukrainian embroidery variety or of dog shirt variety. You know, it is a terrible thing that there is not more gossip about me. I love that of all of the law fair crew. The only one who does get ready with me videos is Ben. It is extremely on brand.

Well, and to say that on that on brand note, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. I think that's a great opportunity. And this is a very great opportunity. And this is a great opportunity is of course a production of law fair. So be sure to visit lawfirmedia.org for a show page for links to past episodes for a written work and the written work of other law fair contributors and for information on law fairs, other phenomenal podcast series while you're at it. Be sure to follow law fair and social media.

Be sure to leave a rating review or view of you might be listening and set up to become a material supporter of law fair on Patreon for an ad-reversion of this podcast among other special benefits. Visit lawfirmedia.org/support. Our audio engineer and producer this week was me of me and our music as always was performed by Sophia Ann and we were once again edited by the wonderful Jen patcha on behalf of my guest Ari Ben and Natalie. I am Scott our Anderson. We'll talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.