December 12, 2025 • 38 mins
Ret. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling joins Margaret Hoover to talk about President Trump’s new National Security Strategy and how his second term foreign policy differs from his first.
Having spent nearly four decades in the U.S. Army, Hertling provides insight into the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the ethical and legal questions they raise for the military.
Hertling, who served as commanding general of the Army in Europe, responds to Trump’s criticism of America’s allies, his effort to revive the Monroe Doctrine, and his decision to allow Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to China.
Hertling also comments on ending the war in Ukraine and discusses his upcoming book, “If I Don’t Return.”
Support for Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is provided by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, Katharine J. Rayner, Lindsay and George Billingsley, The Meadowlark Foundation, and Jared Stone.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
When you don't start off from a base of values, the rest of it,
it doesn't matter. So if you have these end states
of what you want to accomplish and you're talking about all the
resources and people that are going to accomplish it, if you
don't have the ways you're goingto do it, abiding by our values,
then to me it's a bankrupt pieceof paper.
(00:22):
That's retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling assessing
the Trump administration's new national security Strategy.
I'm Margaret Hoover. This is THE FIRING Line podcast.
Europe doesn't know what to do. They want to be politically
correct and it makes them weak. That's what makes them weak.
(00:43):
President Trump's newly releasednational security strategy has
drawn outrage in Europe and praise from the Kremlin.
Russia sees us disrespecting ourallies, insulting our allies,
saying where we're going to shift from Germany to a more
Monroe Doctrine like approach. It casts Trump as the president
of peace as the administration faces growing questions about
(01:06):
the legality of strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats.
We are bombing boats in an undeclared conflict in
international waters where theseindividuals are unarmed, and
there's been no approval of doing this by Congress or even a
statement of what the strategy is.
Mark Hurling is the former commanding general of the US
(01:27):
Army in Europe and a veteran of both Iraq wars.
He says that President Trump is wrong about reviving the Monroe
Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere.
It's regional hegemony. It's what Russia has attempted
to do in their sphere of influence.
It's what China has attempting to do in the Far East.
And about the role of America's allies?
It's America only, and everyone else supports us.
(01:48):
There were really some elements of this document that were
telling other nations how they could better serve us.
General Mark Hertling, welcome to Firing LINE.
It is great to be with you, thanks for asking me.
We are now almost one year into President Trump's second term,
(02:10):
second non consecutive term, andwe're in a very different world
than the president first faced in 2017.
And it's a very different presidency so far.
I wonder, from your perspective,what are the biggest differences
in President Trump's foreign policy posture now in 2025 than
(02:32):
it was in 2017? Well, Margaret, there's a bunch
of stuff we could comment on, all sorts of things that he's
doing, but also the advice he's getting from his counselors.
We saw in the first administration that, and this
has been well publicized and he had a lot more people building
guardrails for him, making sure he knew what abided by the law
(02:56):
and what went outside of it. What we're seeing now, I think,
is he has a coterie of people around him either not giving him
good advice or he's not taking it.
So what I'm seeing is a lot moredesire to go faster in some very
unusual ways and really not careabout any of the guardrails that
(03:18):
might constrain diplomacy, military actions, economic
desires, or informational approaches.
Those are the four elements of national power.
And it really seems to me that he's taking different approaches
to each one of them, really apart from what the norm usually
is. What do you mean by unusual
(03:41):
ways? Well, he's not looking at the
legal ramifications of some of the things he's doing.
We're seeing that in the last few weeks.
Not prescribing to Congress the ability to either approve or
disapprove of any kind of thingsthat would relate to the War
Powers Act or stating things that he's going to do in terms
(04:02):
of treaties or alliances that are well grounded in law and and
agreements, past agreements. He's just blowing through quite
a few things that that are not his alone in my view and many
others. Some of those requirements
belong to Congress, to the departments, to the kinds of
(04:24):
things that he's asking people to do that are contrary to what
our values and our norms are as as a as a nation and what we
believe from the very beginning of our founding.
You know, we continue to learn more about the incident in
September in which Admiral FrankBradley ordered a second strike
after two survivors were spottedamid the wreckage of a boat in
(04:48):
the Caribbean. Based on what we know so far,
you have said that this appears to be a war crime.
And while we have not seen the video of the second strike and
have not learned all the details, I wonder what it would
take for you general to change your perception or be convinced
that the second strike was legal.
(05:10):
Well, it if I were to see the video, I would first compare it
to what happened on the 1st strike and what kind of
condition the men were in. That's been described to us on
the news by people who have seenthe the videos.
But I also put it from the moralperspective, Margaret, you know,
we are we are bombing boats in an undeclared conflict in
(05:37):
international waters where theseindividuals are unarmed.
And there's been no approval of doing this by Congress or even a
statement of what the strategy is.
We don't know what the presidentis trying to do.
He has mentioned counter narcotics operation,
interdicting drug runners and there's even been mentioned from
(05:58):
him and his administration aboutthe possibilities of invading
Venezuela. So what is the strategy that
puts these actions in the context?
You know, when when the militarytakes a look at civilian orders
or orders from our civilian masters, you know, it usually
has a political end state or at least a an end state to the
(06:22):
warfare. And then the military tries to
build campaign plans and the best way to approach it for the
life of me, and I've done campaign planning before war and
contingency planning and and warplans as it's better known to
the American public. I can't see how these things fit
in one another. Just arbitrarily bombing boats
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where there have been no names given of people on the boats.
They declare that they know who these terrorists are, these
narco terrorists as they've described them.
They say that they're coming toward the United States.
But we know when people who use these kind of cigarette boats
would not be able to reach the shores of our.
So it's not an imminent threat and it's not a declared war.
(07:06):
And so they're they're really destroying vessels in
international water. And as you can imagine, on the
1st strike on September the 2nd,those who were destroyed, those
who were bombed in that strike didn't know what the hell was
going on. They got a little bit more of a
deterrent warning for the boats that came after that if they
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were delivering drugs or what they were doing.
But that first one came out of the blue.
It was just a sniper shot with alarge missile that that killed 9
out of 11 people. And the other two people were
just trying to survive after that, not knowing what had
happened. I'm trying to put myself in the
position of undergoing combat and realizing, hey, I'm not a
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combatant. I may be a criminal, or I may
just be a mule that's being paidto transfer these drugs.
Why am I being bombed? What's going on here?
Shouldn't there be bigger fish to fry than me?
And in that sense, what you alsohave to consider is the release
of the Honduran president who was a major cartel owner.
(08:12):
So it just seems to me to be in conflict with common sense and
the reality of any time you go to war.
If the president can declare A suspected drug smuggler a
military target without seeking approval from Congress or
providing any evidence that theypose such a threat to the United
States, are there any limits? Yeah, that's the key question
(08:35):
for those of us in the military,and I think that's what the
debate is right now. Was this a crime, a war crime or
following orders in an undeclared conflict?
It, it, it, there are so many ethical arguments that could be
made in terms of what happened by the individuals who actually
(08:59):
are pulling the triggers. That's, that's the, the thing
that I think most Americans don't understand.
You know, you may have a president who gives an order to
do something, but it's, it's theindividual on the other end of
that order that literally has toface the moral damage by killing
someone. Now, you know, you see in this
(09:20):
case, special operations forces conducting the attack.
These are individuals who over the last 20 some years have been
involved in person to person fighting with killing of
terrorist, going up against individuals who were looking to
kill them as well. So they are very highly skilled
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and well honed in terms of theiroperational mentality and the
way they approach something likethis.
So using those special operatorsin a mission that in the past
has been conducted, and by the way, conducted very well by the
United States Coast Guard in terms of either deterring these
(10:02):
kind of crafts or capturing themin a variety of ways.
And then arresting the individuals who are conducting
the smuggling and seizing the drugs that are in the boats is a
whole lot different than just blowing them out of the water.
So there is some moral injury that goes with the ladder versus
the former. When you know as a military
(10:24):
force your abiding by the rules of of war.
Can you though General walk me through something you and others
have said that the Department ofDefense Law of War manual
specifically refers to the firing upon the shipwrecked as
quote clearly illegal, which is an order that the military is
required to disobey. So realistically, how does that
(10:47):
work? If a commander orders a second
strike to kill 2 shipwreck survivors, and an individual
does not want to execute that order, what does a subordinate
who receives that order do if they believe the order violates
the law? How does that actually work in
real time? Yeah.
In In the Law of War manual, Margaret, I'll, I'll say that it
(11:10):
isn't specifically described as something you can't do.
It's giving an example of that act as something that would be
considered a war crime. So there's a little bit of
difference there. But what I'll tell you, even in
the first strike, again, we go back to the legality of, of
conducting an operation like this without it being described
(11:33):
as combat. There's, there should be some
questioning of the campaign or how you're going to execute it
when you're talking about the difference between the first
strike and the second strike, where you can see if this is
true in the film. And again, I haven't seen it, if
you can see on the film that these individuals are or to
combat or outside the fight and they're just hanging on for dear
(11:57):
life, that's murder. That that is something that the
United States military teaches you not to do.
So to go back to your question, what would an individual do in
that case? Well, they would first question
the order. Wait a minute, Sir.
Whoever they're talking to the superior.
Do you really want us to do this?
Isn't this violation of the law that we've been taught to ensure
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we obey? And if the questioning doesn't
work, then you go to a higher authority, the next level up in
the chain of command. Unfortunately, in this
situation, you have the levels of chain of command seemingly,
and again I'm speaking on conjecture, all of them
approving this strike and not only at the time approving it,
(12:42):
but giving a situation that the military calls commander's
intent. If you listen to your bosses for
weeks on end and they are telling you, here's what we're
going to do, We're going to strike these boats.
We're going to kill all the terrorists.
We're going to make sure the boat sunk and we're going to,
you know, ensure that the drugs go to the bottom of the sea.
And if that mantra is repeated and over and over again, you
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know what your boss wants, you know what they want to do.
So when it comes to the actual act itself, you're conditioned
to obey those orders even thoughyou've known they're illegal or
suspect that they might be illegal by what your Judge
Advocate General tells you. If all of those along the way
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have been ignored, and if there's been no voicing of non
support for those kind of actions, even though some people
know that they're violating the law of war, then that's
problematic to be sure. In 1990 you wrote a Military
View article calling for treating drug cartels as
military targets, which you now say was naive.
(13:50):
Why, General, in your view does that?
Why doesn't this approach work? Well, because back in 19, I'm
glad you cited that. I hadn't thought about that
thing for a long time. Back in 1990, we were discussing
at the Command and General StaffCollege in Fort Leavenworth the
kinds of things we should do if the president were to ask us to
conduct a drug war. What does a drug war mean?
(14:13):
And in a very naive approach, I looked at it from one side, the
destroying of the supply of drugs.
And I said a lot of things in that article about what the
potential would be for the military to be brought into that
fight. And in that article, I talked
about working with the host nation government, working with
host nation security forces. How do you smoke out these
(14:36):
individuals who are part of a cartel and not only does destroy
their equipment, but potentiallyif they were countering you with
guns, to kill them as well? But then I realized I was very
naive on this because any kind of a campaign that consists of
drug running consists of the supply side coming from South
(14:57):
America, or at the time it was Colombia versus the demand side.
And you can do as much as you want to the supply side and your
enemy will get a vote. And in this case, the enemy are
the drug cartel leaders. So they will adapt, They will
adjust their approaches. They will maintain different
lines of effort in terms of getting the drugs to the United
(15:19):
States, but it's just important,just as important, excuse me, to
ensure that the supply side is also provided support to stop
taking the drugs. So this is a two way St. both
supply and demand when you're talking about drug, drug cartels
and what they're providing inside the shores of the United
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States. We don't seem to be addressing
the demand problem at all, otherthan just saying fentanyl is bad
or cocaine is bad. There's got to be more to it
than that. Does it give you any?
You mentioned guardrails as one of the differences in the second
Trump administration versus the first Trump administration's
foreign policy. It seems as though the Congress
(16:02):
has this week suggested that it may hold up the secretary of
defense's travel budget until the second video is made
available to some of the key committees.
Does that give you a degree of confidence that perhaps some
guardrails or checks on the executive may be instituted or
reinstituted? Well, it's.
An interesting approach, but truthfully, I'm a little bit
(16:23):
more hardcore than that. I would like for the Congress of
the United States to do a whole lot more, have some inquiries
into everyone that was involved,not just Secretary heck, Seth
and or Admiral Bradley, but others the the former Special
Operations Command commander, General Fenton.
He would have had to have known about this because remember at
(16:46):
the time of the first strike, Admiral Bradley was not the
Special Operations Command commander.
He was the Joint Special Operations Command commander as
a three star Admiral. So he was one level below his
boss. His boss would have had to know
this, and we are now seeing somequestions being thrown at
Admiral Halsey, who is a Southern Command commander.
(17:09):
He's the guy that's responsible for the entire area of
operation. And whenever special operations
come into an area of operation like what was controlled by
Admiral Halsey, they need to coordinate every single one of
their actions with him. And not only special OPS
actions, but also actions of CIAagents.
And the president has announced that there was covert CIA in
(17:32):
Venezuela at this time and any other actions that were going on
inside of a country. Now, Admiral Halsey, the
Southern Command commander, has been in that location for a
couple of years, but because before he was the commander, he
was the deputy commander. So he knows the nations that are
involved in these kind of counter narcotics efforts.
(17:53):
So I would bet he would be a pretty good advisor to the
Secretary of Defense if he were listened to.
And we now understand that therewas some huge contentious
debates going on not only between Admiral Halsey and
Secretary Hegseth, but also between Admiral Halsey's lawyer,
his staff Judge Advocate and thegeneral counsel in the Pentagon.
(18:17):
So what you're seeing is a bunchof different stories, advice
being given, military advice being given to civilian
leadership to the extent that itcaused an individual to offer
his retirement. That tells me there's a whole
lot of fire behind the smoke. I.
Want to turn to the national security strategy.
The Trump administration has recently released a new national
(18:38):
security strategy. This is a document that outlines
the priorities and principles for its approach to foreign
policy. And you, General, have met, you
have read many of these documents, you have helped draft
defense strategies based on them.
Can you just briefly help us understand the significance of
the President's National Security Strategy document
(19:00):
there? There are some that will write
off. The National Security Strategy
is just a piece of paper. But I got to tell you from
allies and foes alike, they are also reading this thing.
The allies are taking a look at it and saying, what does this
mean to me in terms of our relationship with the United
States? And just like we debate the NSS
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in our war colleges, in our seats of government, other
countries are doing the same thing, in Sweden, in Finland, in
Germany, in Italy. And by the way, our foes are
doing the same you. Called Russia's delight over the
national security strategy document troubling why is that
troubling for you It's. Hugely troubling.
Russia sees us disrespecting ourallies, insulting our allies,
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saying where we're going to shift from Germany to a more
Monroe Doctrine like approach and expanding on the Monroe
Doctrine in which they call the new Trump Doctrine.
It's extremely troubling in terms of the way they approach
different things. Within that document for our
allies and our friends, but it also gives a lot of gifts to our
(20:08):
foes. President Trump's first national
security strategy from 2017 could be boiled down to one
line. You know, America first, but not
alone. Based on what you understand
about this document, what would be an apartment one liner to
describe the new national security strategy of the second
(20:28):
Trump administration? Oh.
Wow. Based on my read of it, it's
America only and everyone else supports us.
There were really some elements of this document that we're
telling other nations how they could better serve us.
So it was very transactional in nature as opposed to the first
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doctrine, the first national security strategy that was
written by a friend of mine, HR McMaster, when he was the
National security Advisor. Let me ask you about.
Let me ask you about one piece of that you just referenced the
National Security Strategy. This document, as I read it it,
it is noticeably devoid of principled arguments about
(21:15):
American values. The the 2017 strategy that you
just referenced that was authored by HR General HR
McMaster, who was then the national security advisor to
President Trump. It's grounded in the ideas that
America's principles are a quotelasting force for good in the
world. The new document, the new
National Security strategy of this Trump administration seems
(21:36):
concerned with denouncing elitesmoving away from alliances
projecting power in the Western Hemisphere.
Does the absence of values basedarguments for our strategy
concern you? Absolutely.
And and it should concern anyonethat's has studied American
government because we know that our ideology and our values
(21:59):
drive our strategies and our strategies, Dr. our policies and
approaches. So when you don't start off from
a base of values, just like in corporate America, if your
company doesn't have values, if you haven't determined what you
want to be and how you want to act, the rest of it is it
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doesn't matter. One of the things that was in
the the strategy too, is it talks about the relationship
between ends and means. And it totally disregards the,
the, the key element of strategy.
And that's the ways you do things.
So if you have these end states of what you want to accomplish
(22:42):
and you're talking about all theresources and people that are
going to accomplish it, if you don't have the ways you're going
to do it, abiding by our values,then to me it's a bankrupt piece
of paper. What?
Are the values that are espousedin this new national security
strategy. I couldn't find any to be honest
(23:03):
with you. It was all very economically
based control of different partsof the world, telling others in
different parts of the world howto run their governments and how
they are about to. In fact, the the statement about
Europe is within 20 years they are going to be nothing like
they've been over their last several centuries of existence.
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So those kinds of insults certainly don't correspond to
the American value of respect for others or an understanding
of what others doing, or libertyor freedom are some of the
values that are in our founding documents and that have been in
our speeches throughout our ages, like Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address or Kennedy's inauguration or Roosevelt's 4
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freedoms. You can't see any of our values
in the current national securitystrategy.
And if we're not living by our values, then we are going to
turn away from who we are as a nation.
The Trump administration calls for a quote Trump corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine, of course,
refers to President James Monroe's 1823 doctrine that
(24:14):
claimed the Western Hemisphere belonged to the United States's
sphere of interest and warned European powers not to interfere
in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
Now the Wall Street Journal editorial board, famously
conservative editorial board, says that this will, quote,
please China and Russia but discomfort America's allies.
So why focus on peace in the Western Hemisphere when the
(24:39):
greatest threats to global peaceare elsewhere?
I I. I don't know the answer to that,
but the only thing I could consider is Ernest.
There is an approach toward various key powers in the world
controlling a regional area of operation.
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So it's regional hegemony. It's what Iran has attempted to
do in the Middle East. It's what Russia has attempted
to do in their sphere of influence.
It's what China has attempting to do in the Far East.
So it puts us in that position of being a regional hegemon for
North and South America. And you even see it in some of
(25:19):
the changes within our military organization.
Just this week there was a change of command at U.S.
Army Forces Command to make it called the Western Hemisphere
Command. That, to me, is a little bit
troubling it It appears that instead of looking at worldwide
potential deployments that wouldstand for the values that we
(25:43):
hold dear, we're focusing on what, just one part of the
world? You know, it strikes me,
General, and I'd like your reaction to this, that the new
national security strategy also emphasizes peace, but it doesn't
clearly define the threats to peace nearly as clearly as the
President Trump's first nationalsecurity strategy did.
(26:06):
It outlined in 2017 the revisionist powers, namely
China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the so-called axis of
authoritarians that are, by the way, coordinating even more
today against American power than they were then.
It seems to me that those powerspose the biggest threat to
global peace. And yet this national security
(26:28):
strategy doesn't even mention North Korea.
It barely references Iran. It calls for more stable
relations with Russia. Can Trump really cement his
legacy as the president of peacewithout confronting the
countries that threaten peace Well?
It's not only that, Margaret, I'll take it a little bit
further and say, yes, all of those countries are dangerous
(26:50):
and all of them are expanding intheir approach to their global
territory and they are dangerous.
In each particular instance. You lied.
But what also isn't addressed are the potential coordination
of other countries in areas likecyber malinformation,
misinformation, disinformation malinformation, space based
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platforms. These are the kinds of Gray zone
efforts that are currently goingon.
And we're just beginning to see the effects of some of these
things when various countries collaborate to counter what
we're trying to do. This perfect example is Russia.
They have wanted to divide the United States.
(27:33):
They have played an active part in doing that as well as
attempting to disrupt the NATO alliance.
They seem to be doing that very well with things like election
interference in various countries, cyber conditions.
I'll give the example of Estoniamurdering people on foreign
soil. That affects governmental
actions. Those are the kind of things
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that they're not seen as tanks or artillery pieces rolling
across borders, but they are going to be just as dangerous in
the next several decades. Last week at the Ronald Reagan
Defence Forum, Secretary Heck Seth declared quote the Monroe
Doctrine is in effect and it is stronger than ever.
General on the original firing line with William F Buckley
(28:17):
Junior in 1980. Buckley himself made the case
for a similar position. Take a look at this clip.
It seems to me if we don't assert the Monroe Doctrine, we
we are creating a vacuum in intowhich we we invite future Cubas.
It's it's easy enough to say that Cuba isn't in and of itself
(28:38):
a threat, but it has certainly taken up a lot of our time
during the past 15 or 20 years since the advent of of Castro.
So is there any reason why we shouldn't accept as a challenge
for the 80's the reimposition ofthe Monroe Doctrine?
William F Buckley Junior made this argument at the height of
the Cold War. But there are conservatives
today who argue that the United States does have a strong
(29:01):
strategic interest in expanding our influence in our own
hemisphere and countering China's presence in Latin
America. Do we?
I think we have a strong requirement to counter any kind
of malign influencers anywhere in the world, people who try and
take away liberty, our freedoms or individual value in, in any
(29:26):
nation or the, the, the choice that people have of electing
their governments, then yeah, we, we have a responsibility to
try and counter that. But it's the way you do that
that's important. It isn't by driving people away
or going in and killing people. We've learned that lesson over
and over again. We should try, in my belief, to
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contribute to good governance inour partners and our allies.
Show them what that means, and show what malign activities
might do for democratic societies.
That's a different kind of approach.
And, you know, Mr. Buckley said all that at the height of the
Cold War, where a lot of Latin American and South American
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countries seem to be teetering between authoritarian
governments and democracies. And it may have been right for
those coming out of colonial power and those who were trying
to determine their future, but Idon't think it's right today.
We have a much different approach to governing and the
(30:32):
way we interact with other nations of both our allies and
our foes. And I don't think any of that
commentary from Mr. Buckley should be applied today.
General, just this week, the NewYork Times reported that
President Trump announced that NVIDIA will be allowed to sell
its second most powerful chip, semiconductor chip known as the
(30:53):
H200, to China. This is, you know, an act that
could enable China to use American technology to gain
military and economic advantage in artificial intelligence over
the United States. Now the National Security
Strategies section on Taiwan says clearly quote in the long
(31:13):
term, maintaining American economic and technological pre
eminence is the surest way to deter and prevent large scale
military conflict. Did President Trump's choice to
sell semiconductors to China, some of America's best
semiconductors to China, directly undermine the National
(31:35):
Security strategy that he published only days before?
It certainly does countermand it, but we're all assuming that
President Trump, like his first term, actually read the National
Security Strategy. This would be the time when his
cabinet members like his Secretary of State, his
Secretary of Defense and Commerce, Treasury would all be
(32:00):
up in arms about something like this and coordinating their
response through the National Security Council to get to
decision making on the part of the president.
But in this case, as in so many other cases, it appears we're
seeing the president make decisions without the advice of
his counsel, his cabinet members, because they're too
(32:21):
busy promoting him and and beingsycophants in terms of what he's
trying to do. This is where it takes
individual standing up in a cabinet meeting or in face to
face primary committees or deputy committees saying this is
not good for us. But that doesn't seem to be
(32:41):
happening. The coordination of actions
don't occur to be part of the schedule agenda on the
president's daily briefings. You know, we see that as he kind
of gutted the National Security Council, which is supposed to be
coordinating these kinds of actions with the different
cabinet members. We don't see that happening as
(33:02):
much as I think we should. I.
Mean does the choice to sell H200 and NVIDIA chips to China
compromise American National security?
Absolutely. From everything I know about it.
I am not a chip expert, but I know that there's a competition
in this region and by selling our best to another country who
(33:23):
is considered our competitor is not a good idea.
You wouldn't do that in business.
You shouldn't do that in government.
So why would President Trump so clearly compromise American
National security on the heels of writing a document if he's so
clearly going to undermine the the principles he stated about
(33:43):
ensuring that America has technological and economic
superiority over China with respect to chips and then to go
just days later sell those chipsto the Chinese Communist Party.
How is? How does?
How do you square that? Well, you probably square it in
the same way as you would squarebombing small drug boats while
(34:03):
releasing a major drug cartel leader in the president of
Honduras. These are actions that cause
confusion not only within our own government and the United
States citizens, but they also cause a massive amount of
confusion with our allies because they don't know what
we're going to do next. We may state something in our
(34:24):
national security strategy, which is our approach, but then
when the president does something that's completely
contrary to that, it can only cause angst and confusion within
our allies. With respect to Ukraine, this
strategy asserts it is the core interest of the United States to
negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in
Ukraine in order to re establishstrategic stability with Russia.
(34:49):
Should re establishing strategicstability with Russia be the key
objective of our country in my? View Absolutely not.
The strategic stability of Russia is not something that we
should be considering at all in these peace talks.
It should be the sovereign territory of Ukraine.
(35:11):
The the dynamic of President Solinsky actually governing his
own country within their bordersand also holding a war criminal
at Bay for what he was responsible for doing, which by
last count was over 12,000 citedwar crimes.
This would be the equivalent of saying, well, Gee, in 1945 we
(35:36):
want to contribute to the stability of Germany.
So that means we're going to give them back the sedent land
and dismiss all of the war crimes they committed in the
Holocaust and at the same time give them the opportunity to
reboot and potentially attack through Belgium again.
That's my corollary to what is happening now with Russia.
(35:59):
We're giving them an opportunityto be war criminals and invade
another country by saying we're contributing to their stability.
That just doesn't make sense to me as a military guy General.
You have a a forthcoming book that will be published this
spring. If I don't return.
(36:19):
This is a journal that you wrotefor your sons when you were
deployed to Iraq in the 1990s, and your sons are now veterans
themselves. In this moment of tension and
uncertainty for Americans and also for the American military,
how are the lessons that you imparted to your sons
significant? Well.
The The original was for our sons Margaret.
(36:41):
The next copy is for our five grandsons, because that's what
one of our sons asked me to do, to take what I wrote back in
1990 and 91 and apply it to the rest of my life and, and give
the same kind of reflections on topics that I've observed over 4
decades in the military. So I traced the kinds of things
(37:02):
I talked about in 1990 all the way through my retirement and
then beyond in new reflections. And hopefully what it talks
about and the gift I'm trying togive is an understanding of
character, leadership, patriotism, smaller dynamics
like what goes on in the army when they go to war, how you
(37:27):
should love your wife and your family.
Because I wanted our sons. If I didn't return to know how
to be men, Well, I did return. That's the spoiler alert of the
book. And so I'm trying now to give
new advice to a new generation. And I finished the last chapter
with some thoughts on a long chapter on leadership and also
(37:48):
MacArthur's prayer to his sons, which talks about what kind of
person you should be in your life to make your parents proud.
So that's what I tried to do in this book and I'm excited for it
to come out. Well, we look forward to it, and
I hope you'll return to Firing Line when it does.
General Martin Hartling, thank you for your service to our
(38:08):
country and thank you for joining me here on Firing Line.
It was a. Pleasure Margaret, and thank you
for having me.
When you don't start off from a base of values, the rest of it,
it doesn't matter. So if you have these end states
of what you want to accomplish and you're talking about all the
resources and people that are going to accomplish it, if you
don't have the ways you're goingto do it, abiding by our values,
then to me it's a bankrupt pieceof paper.
(00:22):
That's retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling assessing
the Trump administration's new national security Strategy.
I'm Margaret Hoover. This is THE FIRING Line podcast.
Europe doesn't know what to do. They want to be politically
correct and it makes them weak. That's what makes them weak.
(00:43):
President Trump's newly releasednational security strategy has
drawn outrage in Europe and praise from the Kremlin.
Russia sees us disrespecting ourallies, insulting our allies,
saying where we're going to shift from Germany to a more
Monroe Doctrine like approach. It casts Trump as the president
of peace as the administration faces growing questions about
(01:06):
the legality of strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats.
We are bombing boats in an undeclared conflict in
international waters where theseindividuals are unarmed, and
there's been no approval of doing this by Congress or even a
statement of what the strategy is.
Mark Hurling is the former commanding general of the US
(01:27):
Army in Europe and a veteran of both Iraq wars.
He says that President Trump is wrong about reviving the Monroe
Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere.
It's regional hegemony. It's what Russia has attempted
to do in their sphere of influence.
It's what China has attempting to do in the Far East.
And about the role of America's allies?
It's America only, and everyone else supports us.
(01:48):
There were really some elements of this document that were
telling other nations how they could better serve us.
General Mark Hertling, welcome to Firing LINE.
It is great to be with you, thanks for asking me.
We are now almost one year into President Trump's second term,
(02:10):
second non consecutive term, andwe're in a very different world
than the president first faced in 2017.
And it's a very different presidency so far.
I wonder, from your perspective,what are the biggest differences
in President Trump's foreign policy posture now in 2025 than
(02:32):
it was in 2017? Well, Margaret, there's a bunch
of stuff we could comment on, all sorts of things that he's
doing, but also the advice he's getting from his counselors.
We saw in the first administration that, and this
has been well publicized and he had a lot more people building
guardrails for him, making sure he knew what abided by the law
(02:56):
and what went outside of it. What we're seeing now, I think,
is he has a coterie of people around him either not giving him
good advice or he's not taking it.
So what I'm seeing is a lot moredesire to go faster in some very
unusual ways and really not careabout any of the guardrails that
(03:18):
might constrain diplomacy, military actions, economic
desires, or informational approaches.
Those are the four elements of national power.
And it really seems to me that he's taking different approaches
to each one of them, really apart from what the norm usually
is. What do you mean by unusual
(03:41):
ways? Well, he's not looking at the
legal ramifications of some of the things he's doing.
We're seeing that in the last few weeks.
Not prescribing to Congress the ability to either approve or
disapprove of any kind of thingsthat would relate to the War
Powers Act or stating things that he's going to do in terms
(04:02):
of treaties or alliances that are well grounded in law and and
agreements, past agreements. He's just blowing through quite
a few things that that are not his alone in my view and many
others. Some of those requirements
belong to Congress, to the departments, to the kinds of
(04:24):
things that he's asking people to do that are contrary to what
our values and our norms are as as a as a nation and what we
believe from the very beginning of our founding.
You know, we continue to learn more about the incident in
September in which Admiral FrankBradley ordered a second strike
after two survivors were spottedamid the wreckage of a boat in
(04:48):
the Caribbean. Based on what we know so far,
you have said that this appears to be a war crime.
And while we have not seen the video of the second strike and
have not learned all the details, I wonder what it would
take for you general to change your perception or be convinced
that the second strike was legal.
(05:10):
Well, it if I were to see the video, I would first compare it
to what happened on the 1st strike and what kind of
condition the men were in. That's been described to us on
the news by people who have seenthe the videos.
But I also put it from the moralperspective, Margaret, you know,
we are we are bombing boats in an undeclared conflict in
(05:37):
international waters where theseindividuals are unarmed.
And there's been no approval of doing this by Congress or even a
statement of what the strategy is.
We don't know what the presidentis trying to do.
He has mentioned counter narcotics operation,
interdicting drug runners and there's even been mentioned from
(05:58):
him and his administration aboutthe possibilities of invading
Venezuela. So what is the strategy that
puts these actions in the context?
You know, when when the militarytakes a look at civilian orders
or orders from our civilian masters, you know, it usually
has a political end state or at least a an end state to the
(06:22):
warfare. And then the military tries to
build campaign plans and the best way to approach it for the
life of me, and I've done campaign planning before war and
contingency planning and and warplans as it's better known to
the American public. I can't see how these things fit
in one another. Just arbitrarily bombing boats
(06:43):
where there have been no names given of people on the boats.
They declare that they know who these terrorists are, these
narco terrorists as they've described them.
They say that they're coming toward the United States.
But we know when people who use these kind of cigarette boats
would not be able to reach the shores of our.
So it's not an imminent threat and it's not a declared war.
(07:06):
And so they're they're really destroying vessels in
international water. And as you can imagine, on the
1st strike on September the 2nd,those who were destroyed, those
who were bombed in that strike didn't know what the hell was
going on. They got a little bit more of a
deterrent warning for the boats that came after that if they
(07:28):
were delivering drugs or what they were doing.
But that first one came out of the blue.
It was just a sniper shot with alarge missile that that killed 9
out of 11 people. And the other two people were
just trying to survive after that, not knowing what had
happened. I'm trying to put myself in the
position of undergoing combat and realizing, hey, I'm not a
(07:51):
combatant. I may be a criminal, or I may
just be a mule that's being paidto transfer these drugs.
Why am I being bombed? What's going on here?
Shouldn't there be bigger fish to fry than me?
And in that sense, what you alsohave to consider is the release
of the Honduran president who was a major cartel owner.
(08:12):
So it just seems to me to be in conflict with common sense and
the reality of any time you go to war.
If the president can declare A suspected drug smuggler a
military target without seeking approval from Congress or
providing any evidence that theypose such a threat to the United
States, are there any limits? Yeah, that's the key question
(08:35):
for those of us in the military,and I think that's what the
debate is right now. Was this a crime, a war crime or
following orders in an undeclared conflict?
It, it, it, there are so many ethical arguments that could be
made in terms of what happened by the individuals who actually
(08:59):
are pulling the triggers. That's, that's the, the thing
that I think most Americans don't understand.
You know, you may have a president who gives an order to
do something, but it's, it's theindividual on the other end of
that order that literally has toface the moral damage by killing
someone. Now, you know, you see in this
(09:20):
case, special operations forces conducting the attack.
These are individuals who over the last 20 some years have been
involved in person to person fighting with killing of
terrorist, going up against individuals who were looking to
kill them as well. So they are very highly skilled
(09:41):
and well honed in terms of theiroperational mentality and the
way they approach something likethis.
So using those special operatorsin a mission that in the past
has been conducted, and by the way, conducted very well by the
United States Coast Guard in terms of either deterring these
(10:02):
kind of crafts or capturing themin a variety of ways.
And then arresting the individuals who are conducting
the smuggling and seizing the drugs that are in the boats is a
whole lot different than just blowing them out of the water.
So there is some moral injury that goes with the ladder versus
the former. When you know as a military
(10:24):
force your abiding by the rules of of war.
Can you though General walk me through something you and others
have said that the Department ofDefense Law of War manual
specifically refers to the firing upon the shipwrecked as
quote clearly illegal, which is an order that the military is
required to disobey. So realistically, how does that
(10:47):
work? If a commander orders a second
strike to kill 2 shipwreck survivors, and an individual
does not want to execute that order, what does a subordinate
who receives that order do if they believe the order violates
the law? How does that actually work in
real time? Yeah.
In In the Law of War manual, Margaret, I'll, I'll say that it
(11:10):
isn't specifically described as something you can't do.
It's giving an example of that act as something that would be
considered a war crime. So there's a little bit of
difference there. But what I'll tell you, even in
the first strike, again, we go back to the legality of, of
conducting an operation like this without it being described
(11:33):
as combat. There's, there should be some
questioning of the campaign or how you're going to execute it
when you're talking about the difference between the first
strike and the second strike, where you can see if this is
true in the film. And again, I haven't seen it, if
you can see on the film that these individuals are or to
combat or outside the fight and they're just hanging on for dear
(11:57):
life, that's murder. That that is something that the
United States military teaches you not to do.
So to go back to your question, what would an individual do in
that case? Well, they would first question
the order. Wait a minute, Sir.
Whoever they're talking to the superior.
Do you really want us to do this?
Isn't this violation of the law that we've been taught to ensure
(12:20):
we obey? And if the questioning doesn't
work, then you go to a higher authority, the next level up in
the chain of command. Unfortunately, in this
situation, you have the levels of chain of command seemingly,
and again I'm speaking on conjecture, all of them
approving this strike and not only at the time approving it,
(12:42):
but giving a situation that the military calls commander's
intent. If you listen to your bosses for
weeks on end and they are telling you, here's what we're
going to do, We're going to strike these boats.
We're going to kill all the terrorists.
We're going to make sure the boat sunk and we're going to,
you know, ensure that the drugs go to the bottom of the sea.
And if that mantra is repeated and over and over again, you
(13:06):
know what your boss wants, you know what they want to do.
So when it comes to the actual act itself, you're conditioned
to obey those orders even thoughyou've known they're illegal or
suspect that they might be illegal by what your Judge
Advocate General tells you. If all of those along the way
(13:27):
have been ignored, and if there's been no voicing of non
support for those kind of actions, even though some people
know that they're violating the law of war, then that's
problematic to be sure. In 1990 you wrote a Military
View article calling for treating drug cartels as
military targets, which you now say was naive.
(13:50):
Why, General, in your view does that?
Why doesn't this approach work? Well, because back in 19, I'm
glad you cited that. I hadn't thought about that
thing for a long time. Back in 1990, we were discussing
at the Command and General StaffCollege in Fort Leavenworth the
kinds of things we should do if the president were to ask us to
conduct a drug war. What does a drug war mean?
(14:13):
And in a very naive approach, I looked at it from one side, the
destroying of the supply of drugs.
And I said a lot of things in that article about what the
potential would be for the military to be brought into that
fight. And in that article, I talked
about working with the host nation government, working with
host nation security forces. How do you smoke out these
(14:36):
individuals who are part of a cartel and not only does destroy
their equipment, but potentiallyif they were countering you with
guns, to kill them as well? But then I realized I was very
naive on this because any kind of a campaign that consists of
drug running consists of the supply side coming from South
(14:57):
America, or at the time it was Colombia versus the demand side.
And you can do as much as you want to the supply side and your
enemy will get a vote. And in this case, the enemy are
the drug cartel leaders. So they will adapt, They will
adjust their approaches. They will maintain different
lines of effort in terms of getting the drugs to the United
(15:19):
States, but it's just important,just as important, excuse me, to
ensure that the supply side is also provided support to stop
taking the drugs. So this is a two way St. both
supply and demand when you're talking about drug, drug cartels
and what they're providing inside the shores of the United
(15:41):
States. We don't seem to be addressing
the demand problem at all, otherthan just saying fentanyl is bad
or cocaine is bad. There's got to be more to it
than that. Does it give you any?
You mentioned guardrails as one of the differences in the second
Trump administration versus the first Trump administration's
foreign policy. It seems as though the Congress
(16:02):
has this week suggested that it may hold up the secretary of
defense's travel budget until the second video is made
available to some of the key committees.
Does that give you a degree of confidence that perhaps some
guardrails or checks on the executive may be instituted or
reinstituted? Well, it's.
An interesting approach, but truthfully, I'm a little bit
(16:23):
more hardcore than that. I would like for the Congress of
the United States to do a whole lot more, have some inquiries
into everyone that was involved,not just Secretary heck, Seth
and or Admiral Bradley, but others the the former Special
Operations Command commander, General Fenton.
He would have had to have known about this because remember at
(16:46):
the time of the first strike, Admiral Bradley was not the
Special Operations Command commander.
He was the Joint Special Operations Command commander as
a three star Admiral. So he was one level below his
boss. His boss would have had to know
this, and we are now seeing somequestions being thrown at
Admiral Halsey, who is a Southern Command commander.
(17:09):
He's the guy that's responsible for the entire area of
operation. And whenever special operations
come into an area of operation like what was controlled by
Admiral Halsey, they need to coordinate every single one of
their actions with him. And not only special OPS
actions, but also actions of CIAagents.
And the president has announced that there was covert CIA in
(17:32):
Venezuela at this time and any other actions that were going on
inside of a country. Now, Admiral Halsey, the
Southern Command commander, has been in that location for a
couple of years, but because before he was the commander, he
was the deputy commander. So he knows the nations that are
involved in these kind of counter narcotics efforts.
(17:53):
So I would bet he would be a pretty good advisor to the
Secretary of Defense if he were listened to.
And we now understand that therewas some huge contentious
debates going on not only between Admiral Halsey and
Secretary Hegseth, but also between Admiral Halsey's lawyer,
his staff Judge Advocate and thegeneral counsel in the Pentagon.
(18:17):
So what you're seeing is a bunchof different stories, advice
being given, military advice being given to civilian
leadership to the extent that itcaused an individual to offer
his retirement. That tells me there's a whole
lot of fire behind the smoke. I.
Want to turn to the national security strategy.
The Trump administration has recently released a new national
(18:38):
security strategy. This is a document that outlines
the priorities and principles for its approach to foreign
policy. And you, General, have met, you
have read many of these documents, you have helped draft
defense strategies based on them.
Can you just briefly help us understand the significance of
the President's National Security Strategy document
(19:00):
there? There are some that will write
off. The National Security Strategy
is just a piece of paper. But I got to tell you from
allies and foes alike, they are also reading this thing.
The allies are taking a look at it and saying, what does this
mean to me in terms of our relationship with the United
States? And just like we debate the NSS
(19:21):
in our war colleges, in our seats of government, other
countries are doing the same thing, in Sweden, in Finland, in
Germany, in Italy. And by the way, our foes are
doing the same you. Called Russia's delight over the
national security strategy document troubling why is that
troubling for you It's. Hugely troubling.
Russia sees us disrespecting ourallies, insulting our allies,
(19:45):
saying where we're going to shift from Germany to a more
Monroe Doctrine like approach and expanding on the Monroe
Doctrine in which they call the new Trump Doctrine.
It's extremely troubling in terms of the way they approach
different things. Within that document for our
allies and our friends, but it also gives a lot of gifts to our
(20:08):
foes. President Trump's first national
security strategy from 2017 could be boiled down to one
line. You know, America first, but not
alone. Based on what you understand
about this document, what would be an apartment one liner to
describe the new national security strategy of the second
(20:28):
Trump administration? Oh.
Wow. Based on my read of it, it's
America only and everyone else supports us.
There were really some elements of this document that we're
telling other nations how they could better serve us.
So it was very transactional in nature as opposed to the first
(20:53):
doctrine, the first national security strategy that was
written by a friend of mine, HR McMaster, when he was the
National security Advisor. Let me ask you about.
Let me ask you about one piece of that you just referenced the
National Security Strategy. This document, as I read it it,
it is noticeably devoid of principled arguments about
(21:15):
American values. The the 2017 strategy that you
just referenced that was authored by HR General HR
McMaster, who was then the national security advisor to
President Trump. It's grounded in the ideas that
America's principles are a quotelasting force for good in the
world. The new document, the new
National Security strategy of this Trump administration seems
(21:36):
concerned with denouncing elitesmoving away from alliances
projecting power in the Western Hemisphere.
Does the absence of values basedarguments for our strategy
concern you? Absolutely.
And and it should concern anyonethat's has studied American
government because we know that our ideology and our values
(21:59):
drive our strategies and our strategies, Dr. our policies and
approaches. So when you don't start off from
a base of values, just like in corporate America, if your
company doesn't have values, if you haven't determined what you
want to be and how you want to act, the rest of it is it
(22:21):
doesn't matter. One of the things that was in
the the strategy too, is it talks about the relationship
between ends and means. And it totally disregards the,
the, the key element of strategy.
And that's the ways you do things.
So if you have these end states of what you want to accomplish
(22:42):
and you're talking about all theresources and people that are
going to accomplish it, if you don't have the ways you're going
to do it, abiding by our values,then to me it's a bankrupt piece
of paper. What?
Are the values that are espousedin this new national security
strategy. I couldn't find any to be honest
(23:03):
with you. It was all very economically
based control of different partsof the world, telling others in
different parts of the world howto run their governments and how
they are about to. In fact, the the statement about
Europe is within 20 years they are going to be nothing like
they've been over their last several centuries of existence.
(23:27):
So those kinds of insults certainly don't correspond to
the American value of respect for others or an understanding
of what others doing, or libertyor freedom are some of the
values that are in our founding documents and that have been in
our speeches throughout our ages, like Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address or Kennedy's inauguration or Roosevelt's 4
(23:51):
freedoms. You can't see any of our values
in the current national securitystrategy.
And if we're not living by our values, then we are going to
turn away from who we are as a nation.
The Trump administration calls for a quote Trump corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine, of course,
refers to President James Monroe's 1823 doctrine that
(24:14):
claimed the Western Hemisphere belonged to the United States's
sphere of interest and warned European powers not to interfere
in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
Now the Wall Street Journal editorial board, famously
conservative editorial board, says that this will, quote,
please China and Russia but discomfort America's allies.
So why focus on peace in the Western Hemisphere when the
(24:39):
greatest threats to global peaceare elsewhere?
I I. I don't know the answer to that,
but the only thing I could consider is Ernest.
There is an approach toward various key powers in the world
controlling a regional area of operation.
(24:59):
So it's regional hegemony. It's what Iran has attempted to
do in the Middle East. It's what Russia has attempted
to do in their sphere of influence.
It's what China has attempting to do in the Far East.
So it puts us in that position of being a regional hegemon for
North and South America. And you even see it in some of
(25:19):
the changes within our military organization.
Just this week there was a change of command at U.S.
Army Forces Command to make it called the Western Hemisphere
Command. That, to me, is a little bit
troubling it It appears that instead of looking at worldwide
potential deployments that wouldstand for the values that we
(25:43):
hold dear, we're focusing on what, just one part of the
world? You know, it strikes me,
General, and I'd like your reaction to this, that the new
national security strategy also emphasizes peace, but it doesn't
clearly define the threats to peace nearly as clearly as the
President Trump's first nationalsecurity strategy did.
(26:06):
It outlined in 2017 the revisionist powers, namely
China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the so-called axis of
authoritarians that are, by the way, coordinating even more
today against American power than they were then.
It seems to me that those powerspose the biggest threat to
global peace. And yet this national security
(26:28):
strategy doesn't even mention North Korea.
It barely references Iran. It calls for more stable
relations with Russia. Can Trump really cement his
legacy as the president of peacewithout confronting the
countries that threaten peace Well?
It's not only that, Margaret, I'll take it a little bit
further and say, yes, all of those countries are dangerous
(26:50):
and all of them are expanding intheir approach to their global
territory and they are dangerous.
In each particular instance. You lied.
But what also isn't addressed are the potential coordination
of other countries in areas likecyber malinformation,
misinformation, disinformation malinformation, space based
(27:13):
platforms. These are the kinds of Gray zone
efforts that are currently goingon.
And we're just beginning to see the effects of some of these
things when various countries collaborate to counter what
we're trying to do. This perfect example is Russia.
They have wanted to divide the United States.
(27:33):
They have played an active part in doing that as well as
attempting to disrupt the NATO alliance.
They seem to be doing that very well with things like election
interference in various countries, cyber conditions.
I'll give the example of Estoniamurdering people on foreign
soil. That affects governmental
actions. Those are the kind of things
(27:55):
that they're not seen as tanks or artillery pieces rolling
across borders, but they are going to be just as dangerous in
the next several decades. Last week at the Ronald Reagan
Defence Forum, Secretary Heck Seth declared quote the Monroe
Doctrine is in effect and it is stronger than ever.
General on the original firing line with William F Buckley
(28:17):
Junior in 1980. Buckley himself made the case
for a similar position. Take a look at this clip.
It seems to me if we don't assert the Monroe Doctrine, we
we are creating a vacuum in intowhich we we invite future Cubas.
It's it's easy enough to say that Cuba isn't in and of itself
(28:38):
a threat, but it has certainly taken up a lot of our time
during the past 15 or 20 years since the advent of of Castro.
So is there any reason why we shouldn't accept as a challenge
for the 80's the reimposition ofthe Monroe Doctrine?
William F Buckley Junior made this argument at the height of
the Cold War. But there are conservatives
today who argue that the United States does have a strong
(29:01):
strategic interest in expanding our influence in our own
hemisphere and countering China's presence in Latin
America. Do we?
I think we have a strong requirement to counter any kind
of malign influencers anywhere in the world, people who try and
take away liberty, our freedoms or individual value in, in any
(29:26):
nation or the, the, the choice that people have of electing
their governments, then yeah, we, we have a responsibility to
try and counter that. But it's the way you do that
that's important. It isn't by driving people away
or going in and killing people. We've learned that lesson over
and over again. We should try, in my belief, to
(29:51):
contribute to good governance inour partners and our allies.
Show them what that means, and show what malign activities
might do for democratic societies.
That's a different kind of approach.
And, you know, Mr. Buckley said all that at the height of the
Cold War, where a lot of Latin American and South American
(30:11):
countries seem to be teetering between authoritarian
governments and democracies. And it may have been right for
those coming out of colonial power and those who were trying
to determine their future, but Idon't think it's right today.
We have a much different approach to governing and the
(30:32):
way we interact with other nations of both our allies and
our foes. And I don't think any of that
commentary from Mr. Buckley should be applied today.
General, just this week, the NewYork Times reported that
President Trump announced that NVIDIA will be allowed to sell
its second most powerful chip, semiconductor chip known as the
(30:53):
H200, to China. This is, you know, an act that
could enable China to use American technology to gain
military and economic advantage in artificial intelligence over
the United States. Now the National Security
Strategies section on Taiwan says clearly quote in the long
(31:13):
term, maintaining American economic and technological pre
eminence is the surest way to deter and prevent large scale
military conflict. Did President Trump's choice to
sell semiconductors to China, some of America's best
semiconductors to China, directly undermine the National
(31:35):
Security strategy that he published only days before?
It certainly does countermand it, but we're all assuming that
President Trump, like his first term, actually read the National
Security Strategy. This would be the time when his
cabinet members like his Secretary of State, his
Secretary of Defense and Commerce, Treasury would all be
(32:00):
up in arms about something like this and coordinating their
response through the National Security Council to get to
decision making on the part of the president.
But in this case, as in so many other cases, it appears we're
seeing the president make decisions without the advice of
his counsel, his cabinet members, because they're too
(32:21):
busy promoting him and and beingsycophants in terms of what he's
trying to do. This is where it takes
individual standing up in a cabinet meeting or in face to
face primary committees or deputy committees saying this is
not good for us. But that doesn't seem to be
(32:41):
happening. The coordination of actions
don't occur to be part of the schedule agenda on the
president's daily briefings. You know, we see that as he kind
of gutted the National Security Council, which is supposed to be
coordinating these kinds of actions with the different
cabinet members. We don't see that happening as
(33:02):
much as I think we should. I.
Mean does the choice to sell H200 and NVIDIA chips to China
compromise American National security?
Absolutely. From everything I know about it.
I am not a chip expert, but I know that there's a competition
in this region and by selling our best to another country who
(33:23):
is considered our competitor is not a good idea.
You wouldn't do that in business.
You shouldn't do that in government.
So why would President Trump so clearly compromise American
National security on the heels of writing a document if he's so
clearly going to undermine the the principles he stated about
(33:43):
ensuring that America has technological and economic
superiority over China with respect to chips and then to go
just days later sell those chipsto the Chinese Communist Party.
How is? How does?
How do you square that? Well, you probably square it in
the same way as you would squarebombing small drug boats while
(34:03):
releasing a major drug cartel leader in the president of
Honduras. These are actions that cause
confusion not only within our own government and the United
States citizens, but they also cause a massive amount of
confusion with our allies because they don't know what
we're going to do next. We may state something in our
(34:24):
national security strategy, which is our approach, but then
when the president does something that's completely
contrary to that, it can only cause angst and confusion within
our allies. With respect to Ukraine, this
strategy asserts it is the core interest of the United States to
negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in
Ukraine in order to re establishstrategic stability with Russia.
(34:49):
Should re establishing strategicstability with Russia be the key
objective of our country in my? View Absolutely not.
The strategic stability of Russia is not something that we
should be considering at all in these peace talks.
It should be the sovereign territory of Ukraine.
(35:11):
The the dynamic of President Solinsky actually governing his
own country within their bordersand also holding a war criminal
at Bay for what he was responsible for doing, which by
last count was over 12,000 citedwar crimes.
This would be the equivalent of saying, well, Gee, in 1945 we
(35:36):
want to contribute to the stability of Germany.
So that means we're going to give them back the sedent land
and dismiss all of the war crimes they committed in the
Holocaust and at the same time give them the opportunity to
reboot and potentially attack through Belgium again.
That's my corollary to what is happening now with Russia.
(35:59):
We're giving them an opportunityto be war criminals and invade
another country by saying we're contributing to their stability.
That just doesn't make sense to me as a military guy General.
You have a a forthcoming book that will be published this
spring. If I don't return.
(36:19):
This is a journal that you wrotefor your sons when you were
deployed to Iraq in the 1990s, and your sons are now veterans
themselves. In this moment of tension and
uncertainty for Americans and also for the American military,
how are the lessons that you imparted to your sons
significant? Well.
The The original was for our sons Margaret.
(36:41):
The next copy is for our five grandsons, because that's what
one of our sons asked me to do, to take what I wrote back in
1990 and 91 and apply it to the rest of my life and, and give
the same kind of reflections on topics that I've observed over 4
decades in the military. So I traced the kinds of things
(37:02):
I talked about in 1990 all the way through my retirement and
then beyond in new reflections. And hopefully what it talks
about and the gift I'm trying togive is an understanding of
character, leadership, patriotism, smaller dynamics
like what goes on in the army when they go to war, how you
(37:27):
should love your wife and your family.
Because I wanted our sons. If I didn't return to know how
to be men, Well, I did return. That's the spoiler alert of the
book. And so I'm trying now to give
new advice to a new generation. And I finished the last chapter
with some thoughts on a long chapter on leadership and also
(37:48):
MacArthur's prayer to his sons, which talks about what kind of
person you should be in your life to make your parents proud.
So that's what I tried to do in this book and I'm excited for it
to come out. Well, we look forward to it, and
I hope you'll return to Firing Line when it does.
General Martin Hartling, thank you for your service to our
(38:08):
country and thank you for joining me here on Firing Line.
It was a. Pleasure Margaret, and thank you
for having me.
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