Life During Wartime: Israel’s Resolve; Can Ukraine Still Win?

>> Nic Robertson: There's Iron Dome being fired up all around us right now, it's illuminating the sky here. The bangs of the Iron Dome intercepting rockets that are being fired from Gaza just a couple of miles away.

>> Bill Whalen: It's Tuesday, November 7, 2023, and welcome back to GoodFellows, a Hoover Institution production examining social, economic, political and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hoover distinguished policy fellow I'll be your moderator today, normally joined by three of my colleagues we call the GoodFellows. But we are one GoodFellow shy today, John Cochran will not be joining us, but we are still graced by the presence of lieutenant general H.R. McMaster.

And joining us live from London a few days in advance of Remembrance Day which might explain the poppy on his left lapel, the historian Niall Ferguson. Naill we can't get three fellows on this show, do you wanna become the attendance officer here at GoodFellows?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I don't know, there's a lot of slacking going on, but I've got on my three piece suit and I'm prepared to give a Churchillian speech to rally the fellows.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Well done, so gentlemen, we're gonna do a two part show today later on, we'll be joined live from Munich by Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. He's returning to GoodFellows, he's gonna discuss the war in Ukraine, the counter offensive and the debate in Washington over funding for the Zelensky government.

But first, joining us live from Jerusalem for an update on the conflict in Israel, a very personal perspective is our Hoover colleague, Russ Roberts. Russ Roberts is the Hoover Institution's John and Jean De Nault Research fellow and the founder of EconTalk, the award winning podcast. Since March of 2021, he served as the president of Shalem College, Israeli's first liberal arts college.

Russ, welcome to GoodFellows and I'd like to begin by asking you this question. I was watching a journalist reporting live from Israel the other day and she said that when the sirens go off and the missiles are coming, that you have about 15 seconds to scramble. So, question, sir, how do you live on a day to day basis knowing that at any moment you have to scramble for survival?

 

>> Russ Roberts: It depends where you live, Jerusalem happens to be relatively quiet we're 50 miles from Gaza. Hezbollah has so far decided not to enter the fray, they have much more powerful and more accurate missiles, the ones that head our way. We get 90 seconds so it's pretty plush here, so we get 90 seconds to head to either a safe room or a stairwell.

The first day of the war, October 7, the horrible massacres, we had maybe four missile attacks in Jerusalem. Now they're once every few days, and it's pretty quiet here. Having said that, a colleague of ours is cooking food for the troops, making sure that they have hot meals rather than horrible sandwiches that the Israel army provides them when they're having to go into Gaza.

And she tells me that in the kitchen that she works in, close to the border it is 20 seconds and they don't get to a shelter they just throw themselves on the ground. So it depends where you are.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah hey, Russ great to be with you and first of all, condolences to you and all your Israelis fellow citizens and really Jews from many countries who've been affected by the massacre on October 7.

And I imagine that there are very few who haven't had a family or friend as a victim in that horrible attack. What I'd like to just ask you is what you see as the psyche in Israel today and is there any debate at all about what the future course of events has to be?

I mean, I know that there's been a great deal of consensus behind the need to destroy Hamas to ensure that Hamas can no longer conduct an attack, anything like that, without being completely reconstituted. But what's the mood and what is the debate and the discussion today in Israel?

 

>> Russ Roberts: Well, thanks for the condolences and good wishes and, yes, you're right. I mean, everyone here, a lot of folks have lost a loved one in the opening days of the war and are very worried right now because everyone I know has a son, a daughter, a husband, serving right now either at a border north or a border with Gaza.

So it's a very tough time, the mood is, there's not a lot of rage there was anger and fear and some rage, for sure, on October 7, the day of the first attack. But the main mood here is resolve Israel it's not the first time they've been attacked by Hamas, it's been a regular problem.

The resolve now is that was it they're done now whether that promise can be carried out remains to be seen. Hamas as you know, has about 240 hostages and we don't know where they are, that we don't know whether they're alive we don't know what kind of condition they're in.

We suspect they're all, if not most, if not all, are in tunnels underneath hospitals and other places going to be very difficult to attack. So there is a great deal of unease about that, about how the twin goals of eliminating Hamas military capabilities and governance of the area is gonna fit in with the goal of bringing the hostages back alive if possible.

The other thing I think there's uncertainty about here is the day after, I call it October 8. It's of course, not literally the day after, but October 8, the world that Israelis live in, when this reaches whatever temporary or semi permanent end of this war Netanyahu said I think yesterday or today there will be a ongoing military presence in Gaza going forward.

I don't think there's any taste for that among the general public that may be a political strategic statement, but how Gaza is handled going forward is gonna be a huge challenge. And of course, there's gonna be an enormous political challenge because Netanyahu destroyed most of his political capital on October 7.

It was destroyed by the lack of reparation, the surprise, the attack, the poorness of the response and what had happened in advance of that attack politically here in the country, he's in deep trouble. And how that gets resolved and how quickly is, of course, on people's minds as well.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Russ, how much attention are Israelis paying to the debates that are going on in the rest of the world? I'm here in London at the weekend. By bad planning, my son got mixed up in a large pro Palestinian demonstration and it's one of many that have occurred since October 7 that haven't been nearly so many pro Israel demonstrations, despite the fact these hideous atrocities were perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists against Israelis.

And of course, on American campuses, there have been some really disgraceful demonstrations of support for the violent action and justification for these atrocities. This is something we're talking about a lot in the UK and the US, is it something that Israelis are paying attention to and if so, what do they think?

 

>> Russ Roberts: Well, people are certainly paying attention to it I think the general, the public face of that is welcome to our world. A lot of people have noticed that when people marched in Sydney, Australia, a very tolerant, multicultural country, Australia and police told the Jews not to go near the Sydney Opera house where the pro Palestinian demonstration was being held, I think.

I think within a day or two of the, maybe three, it was October 10 of the tragedies, that crowd chanted gas the Jews, there was nothing subtle there. From the river to the sea is a slogan you hear over and over again at these rallies, and that means the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean.

And what they mean is, to be blunt, it should be Juden Rhein, free of Jews, to use a very unpleasant word. So I think a lot of us here are thinking, well, they're where you are, we have our own problems. But you also have some issues, people who perhaps don't share the values that you would hope they would share, that certainly seems to be the case in many of these protests.

So that's one response I think Israel has, the other response is there's been an enormous flourishing of Jewish identity in Israel, and that sounds like a weird thing to say, I mean, it's a Jewish country. 7 million of the citizens here of the nine or so are Jews, what do you mean there's been a flourishing of Jewish identity?

As you probably know, there's quite a bit of conflict here between the secular society that the non-religious typically living in places like Tel Aviv, versus the more religious. Sometimes ultra orthodox groups here that are often associated with Jerusalem. There's even worse talk before this war that there would be two states here, not Israeli and Palestinian, but religious and non religious Jewish states.

What this war has done that's absolutely fascinating is there's been a huge, there's no atheists in a foxhole. A lot of people who are not particularly religious have been drawn to traditional forms of Judaism in the weeks since the war started. And I think there's an identity, an identification of more Israelis with world Jewry that was not so strong before.

So there's a camaraderie and sympathy, not that there wasn't there before, but it's much more intense and much stronger in the aftermath of these protests and violence. As you know, a Jewish person was killed at a pro-Palestinian protest yesterday in Los Angeles. So people here are very, very aware of that and identify with it in a way they might not have done so strongly a month ago.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Russ, you're at a liberal arts university, and one of the things I've been trying to figure out is, how the hell do we get here? On October 7, my wife and I were at Auschwitz Birkenau, and I couldn't believe the attacks, like, everybody was just shocked at these attacks.

And now to see people protesting and chanting slogans like, from the river to the sea, which cannot be interpreted as anything but a genocidal chant. How did we get here, do you think it's? I know that there are issues with maybe immigrant populations who are sympathetic to the Palestinians.

But these are pro Hamas protesters from my perspective, and many of them are not from the region. And how much do you think of this is due to what we might call a curriculum of self loathing in universities? In which young people have been subjected to post modernist, post colonial theories, various critical theories that actually have been inflicted on them?

An orthodoxy that is anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, almost unthinking and separate from any kind of humaneness. It seems as if it's a self-righteous but thoroughly unethical sort of ideology that has been embraced by at least a significant number of young people.

>> Russ Roberts: Yeah, I don't know if you've seen the videos, there's an enormous amount of ignorance about the Middle east, about Israel, about the Palestinian problem.

I'm certainly not going to pretend that Israel has been saintly in the way it's treated the Palestinians, I think we have a lot in them to look at in the mirror going forward.. And I am hopeful that in the day after, Israel takes a long look at how we have dealt with this issue in the past and realizes that a different approach is needed.

So, having said that, there's an immense amount of ignorance, and I say that word is just a factual matter. When you press people for what, what does it mean to save from the river to the sea, what is intifada, what does genocide mean, what does ethnic cleansing mean?

What has Israel done with respect to civilians, does Hamas tell the truth, etc? There's a whole range of things you can think about and look at. And I think most people aren't, not surprisingly, terribly informed about this at the level that the more intense feelings people are, intense feeling people are.

And I think a lot of what we're seeing on college campuses is social people wanting to do what they think is the right thing. I think what's been remarkable about the first few weeks of this is that people who did what they thought was the wrong thing suddenly discovered they might lose their job or be humiliated on the internet.

And what used to be free has suddenly become costly.

>> Bill Whalen: But in terms of the general question of how we got here, I think you're certainly right. I think of it very simply from the work of Arnold Kling, who wrote a very, very, very powerful but and very short book called the three languages of politics.

A lot of people look at the world, we call them progressives, liberals on the left, as a fight between the oppressor and the oppressed. Conservatives tend to see the world as a fight between civilization and barbarism. And Arnold looks at a bunch of issues through that lens, and it's very helpful in helping understand how people look at the world.

This is probably one of the most dramatic examples, many of us see this as civilization versus barbarism, people who behead their victims, kill children in front of their parents, rape women. They're not civilized, they're barbaric, and we naturally, in that axis turn with sympathy to the civilized folks, and so we tend to be sympathetic to Israel.

People on college campuses who, especially young people, look at the world through the oppressor, oppressed Axis. It's definitely consistent with the marxist axis and that the marxist worldview in that axis, the Palestinians don't have any power. So the story goes, Israel's the oppressor, and there is evidence for that.

You can, as I said, Israel's done some harsh things and shameful things and sometimes necessary things, all of which are very tough on the Palestinian people, and they look oppressed. And therefore you get this slogan, which I find deeply depressing, but this is out there by any means necessary.

So what happened on October 7 as well, can you blame them? They don't have any power, they don't have tanks, et cetera, et cetera, etc, that moral compass, I believe, is broken, but that's the way they look at the world. Now how do we get to that way of looking at the world, as I think, tied into some of your observations about postmodernism, Marxism and so on.

But I, the part that's really surprising when you think about it is that the places that are, the disciplines that are Marxist, the disciplines that are postmodern. They're an ever shrinking part of American college campuses, and yet the people who are studying those things get angrier and louder.

And this is what we're looking at, it's deeply disturbing.

>> Niall Ferguson: Russ, it seems like there's been a huge generational shift, less than a week after the appalling attacks of October 7, a poll was conducted in the US that found that 65-year-olds and older were 81% supportive of Israel's military response to Hamas.

Amongst 18 to 34 year olds, it was 27%, and there's similar polling in the UK which shows a huge generational shift. And this has been making me think along a kind of strategic line, is Israel's position weaker today in any sense you wish to use the word than it was 50 years ago when there was a surprise attack launched by Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur war?

I mean, I've been thinking a lot about the events of that time, partly because I'm writing about it in my second volume of the Henry Kissinger biography. But I can't help feeling that compared with 1973, Israel's position actually quite a bit worse today, not least because Israel is losing support amongst young people in the west, is that a reasonable thing to say?

 

>> Russ Roberts: A couple thoughts, young people get older, so some of their views will change, I think over time, I don't think they'll necessarily persist. I think back to, you'll know this much better than I do, that in was it 1939/38 when college students in England said, we will not fight for king or country?

It's not uncommon for young people to be pacifist for a whole variety of reasons. But in terms of the strategic position that Israel's in, I want to take it in different direction, actually get your thoughts Neil and Hr. What some people have suggested about the current moment is that it is forcing Israel to face the reality that we cannot defend ourselves alone.

That if for example, we were forced to fight a three-front battle, the three fronts being Gaza, the West Bank, which is right now seething a little bit, simmering and threatening to boil over. And then, of course, Hezbollah, which is the biggest threat of all three. It is only the presence of those two aircraft carriers and a nuclear submarine off the coast of Israel that has restrained Hezbollah and Iran from ratcheting up the pressure on Israel right now.

And that we would not survive this moment if the 150,000 missiles of Hezbollah, which are again much larger and much more accurate than the ones in Gaza, were raining down on the civilian population of Israel. So, in that sense, I worry that we are much more vulnerable, let me give the counter view.

The counter view is we still have a nuclear weapon and that talks a lot, at least in the short run, while others in the area don't have them. The head of the army today of the IDFs pointed out that our F35s, which we do need to get their parts and other things from our ally, the United States, but that those F35s can reach anywhere in the Middle East.

Yes, they can, and they're very powerful, is it the case that we are as self-sufficient as we think we are, or do we now more than ever need the United States? What's your view on that?

>> H.R. McMaster: I think that's true when you're surrounded by the so-called circle of fire, and I think there's actually a fourth front in Syria with a proxy army that Iran is trying to assemble on the Syrian border.

I wonder, Russ, when Israel may have already come to this conclusion that we'll conclude that it has to act against the real return address for these problem sets, which is Tehran. I think one of the reasons why this kind of force has been able to be assembled around Israel is because for too long Iran's been fighting this proxy war against us and we've been fighting the proxies.

We have not been really imposing the cost on Iran associated with the egregious nature of its support for these various terrorist organizations.

>> Russ Roberts: Yeah, let me say something about that, Neil, and I'd like to hear from you. A very wise, thoughtful person about two weeks before October 7 told me that he was very worried about the security of Israel, I said, why?

I said, well, right now there's somebody sitting in Iran who's on the US desk, and that person is thinking there's never been a lower level of support for Israel from the United States than right now. And I think that was probably pretty accurate in October, in late September, Biden and Netanyahu had never talked.

The Democratic Party is much less friendly to Israel than it has been historically, and certainly than the Republicans. And this person sitting in Tehran is thinking, well, this is a good time, the Israeli pilots, one of the great air force of the world, Israeli pilots have not been training lately, they've been protesting, so they're not at 100%.

The country is riven by civil war, over this judicial civil strife, by this judicial reform, people are leaving, threatening to leave the country. There's never been a better time to push Israel over the brink, and maybe that's actually what happened, right? They said to

>> H.R. McMaster: We just gave him $6 billion.

 

>> Russ Roberts: Exactly, and they supposedly waited until that came through and then said to Hamas, okay, go ahead. I think that's somewhat true, I can't imagine they anticipated, I certainly didn't, I don't know if any of you did. The response of Biden and the United States, the full-throated nature of it, is quite a surprise to me and I think to many Israelis here we're very grateful for it.

But nobody wants to go to war with Iran, it's the third world war, right? Historically, Bibi Netanyahu has always talked tough about Iran and hasn't done a thing about it. But he loves talking tough, what we have done is glorious, we put a computer virus in their nuclear program that slowed them down.

I think we assassinated some of their physicists, I don't know if we ever took credit for that, but I don't think it was coming from Bulgaria. So, we're running this sort of low-grade war, and you're right again, it's very much like western history. We don't really wanna go to that level, we'd like to pretend that it's not there, but you're right, that's the problem, and the west may have to face that.

That's the interesting question for me, whether the west is going to see that as a threat not just to Israel, but to the rest of the world.

>> H.R. McMaster: Before we just throw this to Neil, I'll just say there have been 90 attacks against US personnel and facilities by the Iranians in the last three years.

It's already a regional conflict, I would say, and of course, nobody wants to go to war with Iran. But I think if until we act like we know what the return address is, just gonna see more of this, but, Neil, what's your response to Russ on that?

>> Niall Ferguson: Yeah, I mean, if you want peace, prepare for war, unfortunately, that's not really been the philosophy of the Biden administration.

I would characterize this administration as being extraordinarily bad at deterrence, they failed to deter the Taliban from running amok in Afghanistan. They failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, and they failed to deter Iran from unleashing its proxies against Israel, and until today, I didn't really hear the kind of language that I wanted to hear.

I was impressed by Joe Biden's speech, mind you, because it was emotional and compelling. But what was missing from it, Russ, was an explicit threat to Iran, that if it carried on, and particularly if it unleashed Hezbollah, there would be consequences for Iran. And we finally heard words to that effect today.

Long overdue, in my view. If you look back over the Biden administration's handling of Iran from the moment it came into office, I believe huge questions have to be asked about why they attempted to revive a nuclear deal that everybody else looked dead. Why people involved in the administration's talks with Iran got so close to the Iranian regime that they seem to have been taking instructions from it.

And we heard an awful lot about collusion with foreign governments during the Trump administration. What I've read about the administration and Iran sounds a lot like collusion. I mean, there are big questions to be asked here, and it's why Israel is in this, I think, much weaker position, because there was none of this prevarication in 1973.

Moreover, I think the administration is more and more worried about the domestic blowback as it looks ahead to an election year. They're scared of anything that sends the oil prices up because they know inflation is one of their great weak spots. And they must be deeply troubled to see how badly the pro-Israel stance has gone down in states like Michigan with significant Muslim populations.

So I can't help feeling that Israel's position is much weaker than I thought I 4 weeks ago. Really much weaker and i'd be far more worried if I were an israeli today than in 1973, when very quickly, within 19 days, Israel defeated, clearly defeated Egypt and Syria, and they had to stop the fight.

 

>> Russ Roberts: Let me say, true. Let me say a couple quick things about that and I know, Bill, I know we need to move on. Its hard to remember how small Israel is, both in terms of geography and in terms of population. We lost 1400 people on October 7, that's the equivalent of 40,000 plus Americans in the correct Yooper population.

Think about that for a minute. When we lost about 50,000 Americans in the Vietnam war over more than a decade, it's not a single day. The disaster of the Yom Kippur war, most Israelis view it as a defeat. It's true it ended with the Israel armies victorious, but the death toll was horrific.

And again, in a small country, the numbers that you're gonna be hearing of how many people have died, and you think it doesn't sound like so many here, those numbers, you got to inflate them dramatically to make them comparable to America. So the taste for strong responses here certainly is there because we're a bit of an island in a very tough neighborhood.

We're besieged, but we also love our children. And it's a brutal, brutal price that is paid over and over and over again. I think 25,000 Israelis have died in the wars of the country. Think, well, that's half of Vietnam, 25,000 multiply it times 50 to get the equivalent in the United States, and you realize how devastating the ongoing military reality is for this country and it makes things a lot harder.

So maybe we are a little weaker both in resolve and in what we're willing to do, what has to be done. It's not easy.

>> Bill Whalen: We have time for one last question in this segment and Russ, thank you for segueing to me, and I love having a fellow moderator on goodfellows.

It always makes my life easier. Niall, no need for the churchillian oration. John Cochran heard your plea, and he joins us from not an undisclosed location, some airport it looks like. John, you get the last question in the segment.

>> John Cochran: Thanks, I'm here at beautiful San Francisco airport, I just landed.

Russ, it's great to see you.

>> Russ Roberts: Great to see you, John.

>> John Cochran: Sorry for popping in late. You can. So why? I have sort of two questions. You can pick which one you want, the discouraging one and the encouraging one. It's interesting that nothing's happened on the northern border.

And as I see the strategic situation, the Hezbollah rockets, all, what, 120,000 of them, are there to deter now Israel from doing or the US from doing anything to Iran? We've talked about maybe bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities before, but it's clear that you can't do that because 130,000 rockets are going to jump over Israel if that happens.

With that view of it, it seems like they can't live the nuclear things. Are we headed to a larger war where somebody's got to preemptively take out those rockets and that will, of course, explode or put up with a new anti nuclear program? The optimistic strategic question is I hear that the whole plan here was to cleave the Arab states off and bring them back against Israel, but quietly the Abraham Accords are still going along.

The Arabs have figured out it's US and Israel against Iran and that they may even be willing to finally help with the Palestinians, so that could be an optimistic way out of this. Any reaction to either of those?

>> Russ Roberts: Yeah, thinking about Hezbollah. Everyone on this call certainly knows that the joint US Israeli project known as Iron Dome has been an enormously important part of this current moment.

We were talking earlier about running into bomb shelters. You run into the bomb shelter when the air raid siren goes off and then you hear an explosion. And that explosion is not the rocket landing, It's the Iron Dome taking out the rocket and the ones that land in a field we don't shoot down because they're expensive.

So that technology is really good, some people have suggested there's a Peltzman effect there. It's lulled Israel into a false sense of security. It's a very interesting question, but it's a pretty amazing piece of technology. Then we have the arrow, which we recently used to shoot down a much larger missile.

And there's talk of a laser based thing that Israel's working on. So I don't know, it's supposed to be imminent, its arrival much cheaper. I dream of the day that Hezbollah does not hold us hostage in any way but that may not be realistic, and they are ensconced in a part of the world that's very difficult to systematically attack, unlike, say, Gaza City.

What was the optimistic question?

>> John Cochran: The optimistic question is that the Arab states are still interested in the Abraham Accords getting along with Israel, lining up against Iran, maybe even helping with the Palestinian question down the road.

>> Russ Roberts: Yeah, I think, I guess that's the other counterpoint to Neil and HR's concerns about today versus 1973.

We're at peace with Jordan. Their queen has made some unpleasant remarks about the current situation. I don't care for them myself, but I'll take that over an army on my border. Egypt is actually cooperating a little bit, they took some people then with medical issues and foreign nationals who were besieged in Gaza City.

And we have the Abraham Accords, the UAE, I think they're building a field hospital and that Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City. There's talk that maybe they're gonna try to evacuate those folks into some kind of other facility. And if the UAE is helping, God bless them. And of course, Saudi Arabia is potentially an ally of Israel as a counterweight to Iran.

And as everybody knows, many people think this attack was to preempt that, and it'll be back on the table. So there are some glimmers of a hopeful future we'll have to see. And there's internal Iran, let's see if they got their own problems, that's my most cheerful thought.

 

>> Bill Whalen: You offered a glimmer of hope, Russ, we're gonna leave it there. On behalf of all of us, and not just us, the extended Hoover family, please stay safe. And that applies to you, your loved ones, and everyone at Shalom college, we wish you all the best.

>> Russ Roberts: Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, everybody.

>> Bill Whalen: For our second segment, joining us from Munich, returning to Goodfellows is Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. General Hodges is a former commanding general of the United States Army Europe and currently the Senior Advisor to Human Rights First, a non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization. Formerly the Pershing chair in Strategic Studies at the center for European Policy Analysis, he serves as NATO senior mentor for Logistics.

General Hodges is also the co-author of the book Future War and the Defense of Europe, published in June of 2021 by Oxford University Press. General Hodges, welcome back to Goodfellows, you were last with us on the May 4, 2022 episode, that was 70 days into the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

And at the time, you said five very provocative words, and there were, and I quote, Ukraine is going to win. So here we are 18 months later. General, are you still sticking to that prediction? And if so, how do you define winning?

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: 100%, I'm sticking to that prediction.

The amount of time it takes and the cost it, of course, depends in large part on the United States, Germany, and a couple of other Western countries, our willingness to commit to Ukraine actually winning is the key. And so far, we've not done that. I'm proud of what the US has provided, but it has only been enough to keep Ukraine in the fight.

And those are the words that come from people in the administration. The administration, for some reason, can't say our policy is for Ukraine to win, to defeat Russia. And because of that, we therefore continue to dribble out important capabilities that Ukraine needs. And I saw today the German defense minister also said, who, by the way, I think is a really impressive guy, until today, when he said, well, we don't need to provide tourists to Ukraine because it's really not urgent.

I mean, I don't know how to wake people up about why it is urgent and why it's our advantage. What does win mean? I think President Zelensky has said it is to eject Russia back to the 1991 borders, which is the sovereign territory of Ukraine, agreed to by Russia, as well as pretty much the rest of the world.

I would also add there are thousands of Ukrainian children that have been kidnapped and deported into Russia, they've gotta be brought back. Thousands of Russian war crimes they're gonna have to be held accountable for that. There will have to be some sort of security guarantee for Ukraine, obviously, I would advocate an invitation to join NATO.

An invitation does not equal immediate accession, despite what the US national security advisor said. And then finally, we've got to help Ukraine rebuild. And they will never be able to rebuild as long as Russia sits on top of Crimea.

>> Bill Whalen: Naill, you've been to Kyiv repeatedly, do you share the general's optimism?

 

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, it's more a question of whether people in Kyiv share it. The mood was pretty downbeat when I was there in September. And what's interesting is that in the last couple of weeks, some of that doubt has begun to creep into media coverage. You will have seen, General Hodges, quite a disturbing piece in Time Magazine channeling some of the doubts that are clearly being expressed in President Zelenskyy's own circle.

I came away thinking, compared with a year before, the mood had really changed. And it's what you'd expect when the great and much-heralded summer offensive achieved, let's face it, much less than had been expected. The Ukrainians are quite frank about this. In fact, I'm impressed by the candor with which this has been discussed.

It didn't succeed for the reason you gave, Ben. They didn't have the firepower and particularly the airpower to make that offensive successful. So I came away thinking, well, weve gone from glad, confident morning in 2022, when victory seemed attainable, to a war of attrition which is extremely costly to both sides.

And theyre beginning to hear, predictably, voices not only from European capitals, but from Washington, saying, now we need some kind of negotiation. Now, my view, and I'd be very interested to hear yours, is that there is gonna be no negotiation worth having with President Putin, who's already calculating that American politics is on his side, and all he has to do is hold on.

By the way, I took a look at the economists rather good situation map, which they update very regularly, and compared with where we were a couple of months ago, you don't see a clear Ukrainian offensive anymore. In fact, you see almost as much Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory as Ukrainian attacks on Russian-held territory.

So it's hard to be super cheerful when the soldiers that you talk to in Kyiv are themselves pretty glum. I just wonder where we go from here. Is it right to think of this as a Korean war situation where you have one year of extraordinary kinetic mobile warfare and then a two-year attrition process followed by some kind of unsatisfactory armistice?

That's the analogy I've been working with for a while, it's why I was less optimistic than you last year. But where do you think this ends? Cuz I don't think it ends in some kind of Zelensky and peace, I find it really hard to see how Zelenskyy achieves his war aims at this point.

 

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: So a couple of points in response, Niall. And I hard to argue with anything you say, but I would encourage everyone to think about this Ukrainian counter-offensive in a much broader construct. It is so much more than just guys in trenches and minefields. In fact, I've been surprised at how much criticism there's been, even coming from the Pentagon, that was very linear, very land-centric, very unimaginative, versus thinking about it in multi-domain, that is US doctrine, that is NATO doctrine, multi-domain.

Air, land, sea, cyber, and space, where you integrate all those effects to achieve whatever your instate is. Instead, people are pointing their fingers at Ukrainians, look, these guys, they didn't use all the good training we gave them. We would never send American soldiers to do that attack without having already achieved total air superiority and having provided an immense amount of breaching engineering equipment on and on and on.

And yet we've got people in the Pentagon criticizing how the Ukrainians did this, which is to me really offensive. But the counter offensive is so much more than the land part. Ask the commander of the Black Sea Fleet how the counteroffensive is going? It's going great. He's relocating out of Sevastopol as fast as he can just three storm shadows destroyed the dry dock in Sevastopol.

Now that's, that's not a big headline, grammar. There's nothing sexy about it except that without the dry dock the Black Sea fleet can't sustain operations out of Sevastopol. That's required for maintenance of their ships and the bonus of course was that they got a submarine and a logistics ship sitting in dry dock and then a couple days later they get the Black Sea Fleet headquarters.

There were stories about whether or not they actually got the commander as HR knows, you could easily replace admirals and generals. It's the 30 staff officers that were lost that is much more difficult to replace and so what do we see as a result of Ukrainian special forces, Ukrainian drones, three British storm shadows.

They've proven the concept that Ukraine can make Crimea untenable for Russian forces if they have enough long range precision strike capability. Now the Russians are having to move out and they looks like they just lost their newest ship three days ago with another long range shot hit this frigate sitting there in or corvette sitting in Azov Sea.

So when I think about the counteroffensive I think about all of these elements of it and then if you insist on looking at the long Russian defensive line and by the way, the Russians deserve credit, we gave them time, they used it, they used it. And it very skillfully and of course, as General Zaluzhny said in his economist piece, even he, which is surprising, even he acknowledged that he was surprised that the Russians were willing to just keep losing so many casualties.

But I thought it was important in General Zaluzhny's piece and economists that drew a lot of attention to stalemate word. I think, honestly I'm not a Russian speaker but I think that was a translation thing. I had a Ukrainian say, actually it's deadlock which is a slightly different connotation from stalemate, nonetheless, General Zaluzhny talked about Crimea as the decisive terrain so it's not how many kilometers are they pushing back people?

Having said that, every day I see more and more reports about what the Ukrainians are pushing across the Nepro and so I would say, watch this space, watch what happens to Crimea. It doesn't matter what happens up further north in Donetsk and Luhansk. What matters is, as people who study operational art know, getting the decisive terrain, your assessment of the glumness there in Kiev, I would imagine that is exactly how it kind of feels right now.

Here we are in November, it's already getting cold. They know that their electricity is gonna be hit again and again and again, although I imagine the engineers there in Ukraine are very practiced at how to restore power. But I keep thinking about Abraham Lincoln, in less than two years into the civil war, I don't think he had any good news in those first two years.

And he was constantly looking for new commanders. He had even one of his own commanders, eventually, former commander ran for president against him. And somehow that guy persevered. He had people around him. And eventually they started winning, and he found the right commander. And this is not a perfect analogy, but when I think about wartime presidents, it was a long time into the civil war before Abraham Lincoln could even really think, going to win this thing, or FDR or Churchill.

How deep was it into World War II before people finally thought, okay, we're actually gonna win? It was like January 1945. And so I think there are people not as learned as all of you on this call that are too quick to say we need to find a peace agreement.

Who in the world thinks you can make a peace settlement with President Vladimir Putin in power and expect them, number one, to live up to it, and number two, for life, to get any better for anybody?

>> John Cochran: I'd like to follow up on Naill's question. There's the will and there's the means.

Part of these articles were the shocking number of casualties the Ukrainians have taken. Are there any young men left? We're still not giving them the means that they need in terms of weapons to make that decisive breakthrough. And of course, Lincoln and Roosevelt had a tremendous advantage in means.

They just needed to get the whole thing organized and on its way, whereas, of course, Ukraine is in the smaller position as that. So I don't think there's going to be ceasefires or anything, but I was very disturbed by these articles. Are we stuck for a while, at least until the west and NATO say we're in?

Here's air cover, and not just a couple of jets, but enough to really dominate the skies? Here's the machinery you need and what do you do about the lack of men, soldiers to get that going?

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: John, you're exactly right. This does depend on the west, on our president and other western leaders to talk to all of us as adults and say, hey guys, this is to our advantage that Ukraine defeats Russia economically, politically.

The Chinese are watching, the Chinese are waiting to see does the west have the will, capacity and capability to help Ukraine defeat Russia? To create the conditions where there can be some sort of a peaceful outcome in Israel that we can deter Iran from any sort of expansion and still have enough leftover for the Chinese not to make a terrible miscalculation, I think that's what's at stake here.

And actually the best way to get a yes answer to all of those things is to defeat Russia. Then Iran doesn't have their friends in the Kremlin anymore. The Chinese will take note of that. So I think this really does depend on us. And look we're just now getting started, just getting started.

When I hear, well we don't have enough attack arms the CEO of Lockheed will tell you I've never been asked to produce more. So we haven't even gotten serious yet about providing things. Now on demanding question that is when I talk to my Ukrainian fans of course they are concerned about I don't know any Ukrainians that haven't lost a lot of their friends or family members, that's, that's an absolute fact.

And I'm always careful about numbers of casualties. You can never be sure, but that's probably a safe estimate that the Ukrainians have lost upwards of 70,000 killed soldiers and so you can imagine how many wounded they've had. But they have about 2 million women and men military age and I think as they continue to transition into being able to fight a long war, manpower is not gonna be their.

Problem. Trained manpower is a challenge, of course. And I spoke to somebody the other night who is in the business of training officers, and they said, of course, they have got to keep developing young captains and majors to be able to keep this fight going, cuz it's usually leaders that get killed, especially in the early days, because they're out there trying to make things happen.

We had some units in Normandy in the first six weeks, went through four or 500% turnover of their young officers. So, I mean, this and that was in an army that had been training for two years for D Day. So I think the Russians actually have a bigger manpower challenge than do the Ukrainians.

 

>> Bill Whalen: HR, I'd like to get your thoughts on two things. First of all, what the general said about the United States, essentially, in essence, having to juggle three balls at the same time. Provide aid to Ukraine, provide a deterrence in the Middle east, and provide a deterrence in Taiwan.

Your confidence in our ability to do this, if you're not confident, what has to change? But secondly, HR, the resistance in Congress right now to funding Ukraine, how much of this is just a knee jerk reaction to overseas entanglements, and how much of it is a referendum on Congress's feelings about how the war is being conducted?

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, well, on your first question, I think Ben already addressed it. I mean, we can be Americaans or you can be America. I think what we have to do is recognize that we have let our defense industrial capacity or defense industrial base atrophy. We were procuring munitions at the minimum levels for many, many years as a way to save money because our defense spending had atrophied under the Obama administration, and there wasn't enough predictable increase following the Trump administration.

So I think Ben is right. We've been complacent for too long. And what we have to do is, recognize the interconnected nature of these conflicts, as Ben said. We can at least expect our adversaries in other arenas of competition, other regions, to take advantage of our preoccupation or our effort in another to try to accomplish their objectives while we're preoccupied with another problem set.

I think this probably went into Iran's calculations and has been alluded to China's watching this. So there have been some initial actions Ben know more about the details than I do to expand the defense industrial base and the National Defense Authorization act and so forth. But what our industry needs are multi year contracts and a degree of predictability that will allow them to open up additional manufacturing capacity and make those investments, as well as we need to take a number of actions to shore up supply chains and to ensure that those supply chains don't have single points of failure or vulnerability, especially associated with China and Chinese owned entities abroad.

So we can do it, I mean, yes, we can. I think in terms of defense capacity, much of what we've provided to Ukraine has increased our defense readiness, because we provided equipment and weapons systems to Ukraine, and guess what? We're buying and manufacturing new stuff. And just the realization that our capacity has atrophied has led to, as I mentioned, a number of initiatives.

I forget what the exact number has been in terms of investments in the defense industrial base. But then also what Ben was saying, too, I think, is that there are a range of capabilities that can make a big difference for the Ukrainians at this moment. And I think, Ben, what you're about to say is that we're worried about, obviously, Ukrainian capacity.

But when you compare, especially manpower, woman power, the right demographic are those of military age who are willing to serve. And comparing that, I think, to the Russians, Ukrainians. But Ben and Bill, that's my initial reaction to the interconnectedness of these. And by the way, too, you hear other people make an argument, and, Ben, you might want to run down all these arguments, why to not support Ukraine and just knock them down?

Cuz they're all straw Mendez. One of them is that the support to Ukraine is impeding our effort to bolster Taiwan's defense capabilities. Actually, that's not true. The weapon systems that are on backwater for Taiwan are distinct from those that are important to Ukraine's defense capabilities, for example. So Ben, that's my.

And Bill's my quick reaction is these are interconnected. And one of the ways to make sure that we don't have even more conflict on our hands, that we aren't on a path to some form of World War III is to defeat Russia in Ukraine, to help Ukrainians regain all the territory and become a free, independent, viable state that's capable of defending itself.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: I have a question for you, and I'm sure General Hodges will have thoughts on this, too. Are the Russians right to think that if Donald Trump is reelected, they win?

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, okay, so, and this goes to Bill's second question, too, which I didn't answer. Why are we having these difficulties?

So, I'm not a political scientist, although some of my good friends there at Hoover are. So I think this has a lot to do with this narrow, thin majority of the House of Representatives and a small group of neo isolationists, nativists, whatever you want to call this, all right, whoever, whatever, however they identify having a magnified voice.

When I talk to members of Congress and I advise a really great organization called with honor action that sponsors veterans to run for Congress in both parties, and they have to adopt kind of a bipartisan attitude. And maybe that's self selecting. But what I hear from this group and from Rye Barcode, who runs that organization is, there is a great deal of consensus, bipartisan consensus, to sustain the support for Ukraine.

I think we could get past it. And to your question, Neil, about how does Donald Trump figure into this equation? If there is a President Donald Trump, again, he's gonna need Congress to get anything done that he wants to get done. And I think that he would readily allow himself to be convinced to sustain support for Ukraine in exchange for him being able to pursue successfully his domestic and other agendas with the Congress.

So that's my thought of it, I don't think it's doomsday. I mean, believe me, I'm gravely concerned about it because I have doubts about his worldview, the consistency of his worldview, but I don't think it's a doomsday scenario. And, Ben, let me throw those questions over to you.

 

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: Well, artillery ammunition, the US has quadrupled its production of 155 artillery ammo. We were producing 7000 rounds a month because that's what we consumed in our own training. So that was enough. Now, in a little over a year, they increased it to 27,000 rounds a month. And that was a matter of the department putting money on it.

Our defense industries are great, but they're not charities. They have thousands of employees and very sophisticated supply chains. And so, political will is often manifested in the form of money invested into what's needed. And so we're finally getting moving there. We do have a problem, though, on some of the precision preferred munitions, like the GMLRS rocket fired by the Himars.

There's one little plant in Camden, Arkansas, that makes it, and there's one company that makes the rocket motor in the back of that thing. And so, we've got a real problem there, I think. I think that the most of what we have provided, you said it quite well to Ukraine is not something that we really need, if we were in a fight with China, I mean, we're talking two different geographies, different types of fights.

There's just not, we're not having to make a choice, do we hang on to this for fighting the Chinese, or do we use it, do we give it to you, to Ukraine, the congress. It has just really been difficult for me to understand how the republican party, the party of Reagan, openly espouses Kremlin talking points and embraces them, it's incredible to me.

So I can only imagine that this is also not being a political scientist, but part of this is if Biden's for it, they're against it, there's a piece of that, I think, from a political opportunity. Then there is this isolationist streak in the American populous, and people are easy, of course, most people are more worried about our border than they are Ukraine's border, because that's not what something that they think about.

And this is where the president, it's burdens on him and his administration to explain to people why this matters and other leaders have to explain why this matters. And I think, frankly, most people, when you say, well, look, American economic prosperity depends on European economic prosperity, and European economic prosperity depends on stability and security.

Grain flowing, energy flowing, markets, so it's our benefit that Ukraine is successful, if they're not, then we're gonna have continued disruption of grain. I was speaking to a member of parliament last week, and he said UK food prices are up 17%, directly attributable to the disruption of Ukrainian grain, that's not inconsequential.

And so I think the president has to explain this and that China is watching and that if your priority, like Senator Hawley, is forget this, we got to focus on China, okay. Stopping Russia helps.

>> John Cochran: I think we're missing three big pictures here, one is, if there is a new President Trump, nobody can predict what the heck this guy's gonna do.

And the level of chaos in us domestic politics in the first couple of years of a new Trump administration will be off the charts. And, the idea of him even having a program and getting it through Congress, we're gonna be in the courts, we're gonna be in the streets, it's gonna be a mess on Ukraine.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Or just the dissonance in his own mind about this.

>> John Cochran: Yeah, I mean, the guy, you can't predict for ex the guy, but then the chaos of the US domestic, if that happens, is gonna be far beyond on Ukraine, I worry that we're just talking about enough faith to keep the dribble going.

But from both of you military guys, you want a successful combined arms offensive that requires just a qualitative, quantitative, much more of everything and stuff that they're not even getting. So I'm not even hearing enough to get that going, and even Ben, I don't think, has been loud enough on why this matters, it's not just about grain prices going up in the UK for a while until Kansas produces more grain.

This is existential, are we gonna be, is this gonna end in a stalemate and is not a negotiation? Just sit there for a while, and therefore, they're already calling for ceasefire in Israel, is that gonna end in a stalemate? And once again, we haven't responded.

>> H.R. McMaster: Putin's hosting Hamas, right, I mean.

 

>> John Cochran: Exactly.

>> H.R. McMaster: More evidence of Putin's hostility to us, right, I mean, just look at what the actions are.

>> John Cochran: This is about, we don't live in a world where we keep losing over and over again where people invade and take over countries, that's really existential, far beyond small matters of green crisis, absolutely.

 

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, just I wanted to pick up on something here, too, Ben, just on will, right, you talked about the multiple domains, will is a domain, and you touched on this a little bit already. Hey, Ben, I'll tell you, you have a good appreciation for Ukrainian will, right?

Will of the government, will of those in the armed forces to continue the fight, could you maybe reprise that for us, how you see Ukrainian will, but then speculate a little bit about Russian will? When I look at the number of casualties, right, I look at what's motivating them, I mean, when you bring criminals into the fight, they're not motivated, the way the Ukrainians are motivated, the way that our young servicemen and women are motivated, right?

They're motivated by their own selfish motives, maybe to get out of a jail cell, or maybe they're motivated by fear of an FSB agent, capping them in the back of the head if they don't continue the doomed offensives that they've been conducting. I what gives me hope, that is like moral collapse by the Russians man, I mean what do you.

 

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: Different sort of cultures at play here, of course, they're on the Ukrainian side, they are literally defending their homeland, defending their families, and so you've got a powerful will there that has been through all of this. And they know they've got a tough winter ahead, and my sense from the Ukrainians with whom I speak, although I don't have Neil's recent boots on the ground there in Kiev.

So I, you take it with a grain of salt, there is determination, but there is a glumness because they have lost so many out of a generation. Now I am starting to hear that there are more and more Ukrainian military age males that are not sticking around. I mean, there are thousands of them in Poland and Romania and Germany, and this is something they're gonna have to get their arms around to require these guys to come back.

And as has happened in almost every other country that's ever had conscription, there are people, there are always people who will find a way out of it, and that's also true in Ukraine. So this is something that they're gonna have to fix on the Russian side, I was in Tbilisi back about two months ago for a conference there, the McCain institute's annual conference there, and there's 100,000 Russian military age males in Georgia alone.

They're there not because they're against Vladimir Putin, they're there because they don't wanna go to Ukraine, and there are probably, I've heard different estimates, but at least 500,000 other Russian military age males that left the country rather than get mobilized. The casualties, of course, if you had as many casualties in one of our countries that the Russians have suffered, there would have been huge changes of government, things would have happened.

It barely raises an eyebrow on Russia because almost none of these casualties come from Moscow or St Petersburg, I was speaking with a guy last night who is, let's just say he has extensive Russia experience as a diplomat. And he said that the casualties, the guys who are paying the price, come from the hinterlands, they come from different ethnic regions, they're not Muscovites or people from St. Petersburg.

And so you don't see it in the news there, you don't feel it the way you would that you do in Ukraine, and so it's hard for me to make a useful assessment or prognosis about how much longer the Russian people are willing to do this. But Putin doesn't have to worry about committee hearings from the Duma or journalists sticking a microphone in his face, and he obviously doesn't really have to worry about an election either.

So it's the people around him to his circle, I think, when they realize that their life is never going to get better again, they're never going to get back to their yacht or their mistress or whatever it was they had, that's when he'll feel pressure.

>> Bill Whalen: General, we're gonna have to cut it off there, we sure appreciate you coming on, and how about coming back a third time and let's continue the conversation.

 

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: Well, if you guys can take the pain, I will always say yes.

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I hope the next time we'll be gathering to discuss Ukraine's victory, he was hoping.

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: I would like that, I would like.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, thank you, General Hodges.

>> Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges: Thanks, guys, for the privilege.

 

>> Bill Whalen: And that's it for this episode of Goodfellows, but first, I'd like to remark on how wonderful it is to see all three Goodfellows on the same screen, Naill, you didn't have to give the pep talk after all, just your powers and persuasion never ceased to amaze me.

 

>> Niall Ferguson: John's dedication to the cause of Goodfellows was truly moving, and I'm impressed, John, that you managed to get your connection to work from an airport, they're always extremely difficult places in my experience, to do this kind of thing from.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes, loyal viewers should be impressed by this, John is not just sitting in an airport, I think he's got a laptop on his waist, which means he has to kind of stay stable.

There you go, he has to stay on mute so I don't hear airplane announcements and so forth, very impressive my friend, so that's it for this episode, we'll be back in late November, which means a couple of things are gonna happen between now and then. If you are in the UK, take time on remembered stay to honor those who sacrificed, and if you're in the US, take time on Veterans Day to honor those who served and are serving.

And if you celebrate Thanksgiving, take time to reflect on all that is good, as grim as our conversations can be sometimes, there's a lot of good in the world ,so remember to give thanks. So on behalf of my colleagues, Neil Ferguson, John Cochran, H.R McMaster, our guest today, Russ Roberts and General Ben Hodges, we hope you enjoy the conversation, we look forward to seeing you the next time we're on the air, till then, take care, and again, thanks for watching.

>> Speaker 1: if you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch battlegrounds, also available@hoover.org dot.