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Might the United States Lose Access to Foreign Bases? · Net Assessment

• 0:08
  Melanie Marlowe: Hello, and welcome to Net Assessment, where we debate the hard choices facing America's national security and foreign policy communities. Today, we're going to talk about American access to allies' territorial assets. What are the benefits and costs to allies of hosting the American military? As traditional allies have limited airspace and basing access to the United States during the Iran War, has a major fault line in American strategy been publicly exposed? And if allies do limit wartime access to the United States, will it stop us from fighting unwise as well as wise wars? I'm Melanie Marlowe of CSIS, here with Chris Preble of the Stimson Center and Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute. How are you?
• 0:48
  Chris Preble: Hello again.
• 0:49
  Zack Cooper: Konnichiwa.
• 0:50
  Chris Preble: Konnichiwa, Zack. Good evening, Zack. It's morning where we are, it's evening where Zack is.
• 0:57
  Melanie Marlowe: What are you up to, Zack?
• 0:58
  Zack Cooper: Well, it's a new day in America. We have peace in our time.
• 1:02
  Chris Preble: We have peace in our time.
• 1:03
  Melanie Marlowe: Do we?
• 1:04
  Zack Cooper: Yeah. That's what the president says.
• 1:06
  Chris Preble: That's what the president says.
• 1:08
  Melanie Marlowe: Hey, maybe we do, maybe we don't. I think that the president is happy to have JD Vance sign on the dotted line and get out.
• 1:21
  Chris Preble: That's right. That he could disavow all. It's, kind of, like when he sent Pompeo to sign the Afghanistan deal, right, in the first administration, so.
• 1:32
  Zack Cooper: If you had had on your bingo card, "JD Vance meets with Pakistanis and Iranians to sign Trump peace deal after Middle East war," you have won. Congratulations.
• 1:46
  Chris Preble: Hey, don't joke. There's probably a Kalshi contract for that out there somewhere, so, you know.
• 1:51
  Melanie Marlowe: Oh, there probably is. So, is this going to endure? What do we think's in it? We don't know yet because the American side has not released what they believe it to be.
• 2:03
  Chris Preble: Right. There's a lot of spoilers. There's so many different ways that different actors can make this go sideways. I mean, you know, even rogue actors in the IRGC. And then, is Israel actually stopping its bombing of Lebanon because the Iranians have made that a pretty key point in the negotiations? And, you know, if the Israelis don't think that's in their best interest, then they could just ignore the deal and keep bombing, keep shelling Lebanon, so.
• 2:28
  Melanie Marlowe: Zack, what do you think?
• 2:29
  Zack Cooper: Well, it does seem like this deal is a little bit different than some of the past announcements, where we haven't seen any Pakistani or Iranian agreement that there's some sort of deal under negotiation that is at least close to the finish line. But yeah, it seems to me, as Chris was saying, until this is signed, it's hard to believe that it's finished. And even after it's signed, there's a lot that could go sideways. And the president initially announced that the Strait was going to reopen immediately. Now the Strait's reopening, you know, five days after he initially said. Yeah, so it's probably slightly premature to declare victory here.
• 3:13
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, it will be interesting because, as we seem to understand it, it is a deal to then have a negotiating period where a lot of other people say they're details, but they're big points of what apparently the conflict was over that are still unresolved, so it will be interesting. And the money question is hanging over everything. I'm seeing a lot of consternation from some Iran hawks that the money is a problem. I'm seeing others saying this is not possibly going to be what the final deal is, and who knows who's right? But I did look back and see the people who were saying during the JCPOA, which, by the way, I didn't like, saying money is fungible. It doesn't matter if it's for humanitarian purposes. This can get spent a number of different ways. The administration seems to think that they will have some sort of approval on how this is spent, and maybe they will, having learned past lessons. But there's just a lot up in the air. Zack, you wanted to say something else?
• 4:13
  Zack Cooper: I think the other question here is what happens on enrichment.
• 4:16
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Zack Cooper: So, we haven't heard much about this. Somebody I know in the administration told me last week that the goal was to try and have the Iranians agree to talk about enrichment in the future. I mean, that is as soft a deal as you could possibly get. So, I wonder if what we have here is less of a permanent arrangement and more of a short-term ceasefire.
• 4:42
  Chris Preble: Yeah.
• 4:43
  Melanie Marlowe: Right.
• 4:44
  Chris Preble: We'll see.
• 4:45
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay. Well, Chris, you have the show. What are we talking about?
• 4:49
  Chris Preble: We're talking about Rachel Metz's article in Foreign Affairs, which is entitled Iran and the Hidden Cost of Wartime Access. Overseas Bases Make the U.S. Military Dominant and More Likely to Blunder Into War, which is a fantastic subtitle because it, sort of, tells the whole story. Rachel Metz is assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, home of the Fighting Revolutionaries, my alma mater, yay, GW. Rachel is a fantastic scholar. I've always really liked her work, and this one is really appropriate. And I think, as the discussion will reveal, it is not mostly about the Iran War. She uses the Iran War as a hook to make a broader argument. So, according to Metz, "The United States is able to project power over great distances, thanks in large part to the willingness of U.S. allies and partners, including some countries with whom the United States does not have a formal alliance," but those allies and partners will allow U.S. to host forces on their territory. Indeed, she writes, "Wartime access, decisions by states to allow the United States to fight wars from inside their borders, has been the foundation of Washington's strategy to project and sustain combat power in all corners of the world." And she notes that the United States has waged war just in the last year in at least seven places, Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and then plus the strikes in the Caribbean. And since World War II, the United States has fought wars or conducted major combat operations in the following countries, but not limited to, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, and Vietnam. So, it's not like we don't have evidence that the United States is able to wage war over great distances, thousands of miles, many thousands of miles away from our shores. "However," she continues, "after the war in Iran, states may begin to rethink their stance. Given that the United States was unable to shield its Gulf partners fully from Iranian missiles and drones, other partners may fear becoming similarly vulnerable. On the whole," she continues, "Washington's military operations have benefited greatly from allies' and partners' grudging but ultimately permissive attitudes toward access during the war. The allies and partners themselves have not, that is, have not benefited. And so, when states decide to allow other states to fight wars from inside their borders, they decide to make their states part of the battlefield." Unquote. Do you two agree? Is there a danger that the war with Iran will cause countries, many thousands of miles away from the Middle East, as well, to question the wisdom of hosting U.S. forces? And will that, in turn, have a meaningful impact on the United States' ability to wage war many thousands of miles away from the continental United States? What do you think? Zack is nodding his head.
• 7:40
  Zack Cooper: Yes.
• 7:41
  Chris Preble: Yes. Zack says yes.
• 7:43
  Zack Cooper: There you go. I like this piece, and like you, I think Rachel's work is really good. And she had a piece along these lines with Austin Carson and Paul Poast in International Organization about six months ago, which I think was also quite good. I think what's so interesting about this piece is two things for me. First, I had not thought a lot about the fact that, in this new age of drone warfare and unmanned systems, the alliance implications for countries that are hosting forces are significant because the defensive capabilities to defend against those incoming systems are pretty limited unless you're willing to expend lots of very, very expensive missile defense interceptors. And so, the costs of wartime access have gone up alongside the cost of projecting power, which, independent of anything the U.S. is doing today, might make it harder for allies and partners to make the decision to give the U.S. or other countries access to their territory. So, I think that's a really interesting dynamic that applies not just to the Middle East but, you know, potentially in Europe and Latin America, given some of what's going on, and certainly in Asia. But the other part of this that I like, and I know maybe this is why you picked it, Chris, is that it feels like we've almost gotten used to the United States being able to fight anywhere, anytime, over any issue because of this wartime access and peacetime access. And I do wonder whether we're starting to see that ability erode a little bit, due in part to changing views of the U.S. And you would imagine that, as the United States, sort of, declines in power, some countries might reassess whether they really want to have the U.S. have access at all. So, I like that this piece raises two, at least two, really big questions that I think are worth discussing.
• 9:46
  Chris Preble: Yeah. Melanie, what do you say?
• 9:47
  Melanie Marlowe: Those are really good points, and I also liked the piece. I wish it had said a little bit more about, okay, so in the meantime, this is what we should be doing. But I do believe that the Iran War has revealed lots of problems, as Zack mentioned with that, but also, again, with not getting allies on board at the beginning, not explaining to them what some of the costs might be, not helping them to get prepared, not asking for permission. Again, you learn things from every conflict, but our adversaries learn things from every conflict, too, and so they understand where the United States is vulnerable. Now, for example, we moved a lot of our air operations to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina before this even began because we did anticipate some of these problems. But it's split, you know. It's like 50-50, I think, in 2024, and I think so it became more in 2026. It's not all there. And I know people who are at some of these bases who, of course, haven't said anything, but as stories have trickled out, especially in the last, I would say, month, it's become very clear that there has been more damage than the United States understood. And then I will say it has made us really vulnerable. And, for example, so these states who are supposedly working with us are paying off Iran to get transit through the Strait or to stop targeting their hotels, where, if we've moved personnel off bases and into those hotels, they become legitimate targets. So, there's all sorts of logistical issues about this that are very complicating factors. But it did make me really think about, we are going to have, I think, much clearer lines between wars of choice and wars of necessity, and even the timing of wars of necessity. Because in a way, it's hard for me to believe that a true war of necessity, like a real war that the United States had no other option to fight at that time, that many of our allies still would reject overflight or reject some basing, or at least enough of our allies. But I think that, for wars that are not perceived as being necessary, or very serious, I think it's going to be a lot harder for the United States in the future.
• 12:12
  Chris Preble: And that's basically where Metz comes down. And I think the tone of the article is pretty clear. She thinks this might be a good thing if it becomes harder for the United States to wage war quickly. This is what she writes, "Permissive wartime access increases the odds that the United States wages unwise wars." And she posits that while Washington might lose its global reach, an extra barrier to military action could help keep the United States out of ill-advised wars. So, while she concludes that the United States may not routinely seek to project military power all over the world if it's denied this access, that may ultimately be a blessing, she writes, "If war were harder to wage, perhaps Washington would wage fewer unwise wars."
• 12:54
  Melanie Marlowe: I guess one characterization I would make distinct is between unwise, unnecessary, necessary, and choice. So, I don't think that every war of choice is unwise. I don't think every war that might be necessary is wise.
• 13:11
  Chris Preble: No, I think that's a good distinction. And I think, from my perspective, I think we have grown accustomed to a fire-ready-aim approach to the use of force, and certainly we have short-circuited discussions around, obviously, congressional authorization. This comes up constantly on this show. It's like, well, the president just wages war whenever the hell he wants. And, you know, there's a presumption, it seems to me, that among many in the national security community, that speed is a good thing. Like, being able to intervene quickly, many thousands of miles away, is a good thing, and it is precisely the forward positioning of troops that enables us to wage these wars quickly. But the flip side of that is that that speed might not be a good thing, is that actually time to deliberate and consider the wisdom of military intervention is good. Now, I understand. And again, I understand this from the perspective of deterrence and extended deterrence and things like that. Zack, what do you say? Where do you come down on this dividing line between speed and caution?
• 14:20
  Zack Cooper: I guess for me, this raises the fundamental issue of alliance dynamics, right?
• 14:27
  Chris Preble: Yeah.
• 14:27
  Zack Cooper: Which is that when our allies are worried that we are going to entrap them in a conflict that they don't want to be part of, they are going to pull away. And I think what you're seeing from some U.S. allies like Spain and even Italy is that they don't want to be drawn into the Iran War, and so they are pulling away from the U.S. a little bit. I don't think this is a fundamental long-term change in terms of eliminating access to the United States, but, you know, it's certainly a signal. The thing that worries me, and it's not specific to this piece, but I think we're seeing a lot of movement towards allies being worried both about getting entrapped in a conflict that they don't want to be in, but also, at the same time, about getting abandoned. And, you know, this is not, as we've talked about before, this is not the way alliance relationships are usually supposed to work. Usually, you're worried about one much more than the other.
• 15:28
  Chris Preble: Right.
• 15:29
  Zack Cooper: It's pretty rare that your allies both think that you're going to drag them into a war and abandon them at the same time because that should, sort of, be opposite things. And I think perhaps, Chris, if the United States was to slow down a bit and sit more with its allies and explain to them the logic of what we were doing, we would have more support. Part of the problem that we're seeing from NATO at the moment is that they weren't consulted on the Iran War, but now they're being asked, or they were being asked before the war ended, I guess, to help support it. So, I don't know if slowing the U.S. down is necessarily a good thing in the long term, but I do think it might force the United States to think more seriously about having some of these conversations with allies, you know, real consultations, which we haven't done in the last year in several cases.
• 16:24
  Melanie Marlowe: So, I would say, like, even for people who thought that the Iran War was necessary, it's just hard for me to make a case that we were ready for it and that we shouldn't have waited longer for it, to have more assets in the region, if we were really thinking about the Strait, have more air defense, all of the things that should have been clear to people. And so, I'm not opposed to having a lot of forward assets. But again, that's what I mean by even if you think a war is necessary, it might not be wise at the moment, or like you have to think about what your strategy, what your objectives are, and how to best accomplish those. But Zack said what I was thinking. It's not just the getting entrapped. It's that we're going to desert them. And people are looking at the Israel situation right now and saying the United States is fighting in the Middle East with Israel, its model ally, and now it's using Lebanon and saying, "You guys have to stop that because I want a deal with Iran," instead of saying to Iran, "You guys have to stop this, or else I'm going to let Iran bomb you, you know, to smithereens." And so, I don't know that that should be a real Exhibit A for our allies to be thinking about because we did go into this so closely with Israel, and we have absorbed so much for Israel. I mean, we have expended a lot on Israel's behalf, so that we did that. I think we did, you know, as much as we could reasonably have been expected to do. But, of course, is the United States always going to put its interests first, and are they going to say, "Our interests are not necessarily yours"?
• 18:12
  Zack Cooper: I think that's the key point, Melanie, which is there's now a divergence in perceptions of U.S. interests and perceptions of the interests of a number of U.S. allies. And in truth, I think the Trump administration also shares this perception that our allies' interests, in some cases, are different than ours. And the more that this is the case, the more those allies are going to be uncomfortable giving the U.S. blanket access to their territory. If that's where we're headed, I think it's a world in which access may turn out to be much more contingent than we thought. You know, there's a big debate going on now in South Korea about whether South Korea should support the idea of strategic flexibility, in which U.S. forces in Korea would be used in, say, a China-Taiwan contingency. That sort of debate may become much more frequent. You know, we've just, sort of, assumed, for the most part, that we could use NATO territory to conduct operations really anywhere in the world without NATO allies, other than maybe Turkey, preventing us. I think now those discussions are going to be different. And, you know, I was just in Europe last week, and the European discussions on the United States are pretty dire, and that was even before we announced that we were going to limit U.S. aircraft availability to NATO allies. I think this sort of discussion is probably something that's going to become more and more frequent with most of our allies and partners.
• 19:49
  Chris Preble: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad the way this conversation has played out. Metz doesn't get into this as much in the article, but I think it's worth engaging. I've been reading for a project that I'm doing with a colleague at Stimson on entanglement and entrapment. I reread Tongfi Kim's article from many years ago, "Why Alliances Entangle but Seldom Entrap," and then also, you know, Michael Beckley's work on this. One of the points of friction, which I think Beckley even more so than Kim calls out, is that it is precisely allies who can serve as a, if not a brake, at least a sort of impediment or, you know, slow down the rush to go to war precisely because a distant war that is in the service of one ally or a partner is not in their interest. But this is another point worth emphasizing. It is precisely the fact that the United States has alliance commitments to, or some sort of security commitment of some type to, over 50 countries, okay? And it is practically inevitable that, at some moment in time, one ally's interests are not going to be the same as another ally's interests, even if their interests generally align with the United States much of the time, which I think is true, but not always. So, how do you adjudicate those differences? And there's also, we mentioned the case of Turkey and the Iraq war. That's a famous case. Of course, Pakistan cut off access in 2011 after the strike on Osama bin Laden. And in the case of the Iran Wars, you know, Zack's already mentioned Spain and Italy. There have been times in the past when allies have said, "No. What we value about this alliance is not the alliance, but the interest being served by it. And if, in fact, the particular use of force that you're asking us to support is not consistent with our interest, we're not going to do it." And I think we're more likely to see that now going forward. And we already have seen a little bit. We're likely to see even more of that, I think.
• 21:45
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, I think that that's right.
• 21:47
  Chris Preble: So, anticipating that discussion, I think Metz does explain that if Washington wants to continue to project military power around the world, it will need to consider how to better protect its hosts. Because, again, if their interests are relatively low, then it may, sort of, assuage their concerns a little bit by saying, "It's going to be okay. You're not going to be singled out." But then that raises a host of other challenges because it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. And what does protecting hosts, you know, what does that actually entail? You know, does that then put Americans in the position of... Does it cause us to violate our own security interests or our values, or both, in order to maintain access? And yes, we've seen that. We have all kinds of cases in history, you know, human rights abuses, or if it launches a war of its own, is the United States then inviting retaliation, again, not just on itself but on other allies and partners? But ultimately, I think it's still fair to say that the case that Metz is making is, I would suppose, not the dominant position among most national security analysts in the United States, which is it is generally not a good thing if the United States is less able to wage war around the world and, therefore, we should be counting on allies to give us the support. Really, ultimately, do you two think that the compromises that we have made or the compromises that we would have to make in the future in order to continue to maintain this access, do the benefits of that access outweigh the costs? What do you say?
• 23:09
  Melanie Marlowe: Well, I don't think that we're paying the costs that we need to be paying in order to have this kind of projection. There's not money going towards hardening the bases. There is not money going towards protecting our aircraft. We've lost probably close to four dozen important, expensive aircraft in this war. And again, I'm not saying that it is never worth it, but it better be worth it when you're talking about the kind of time and money, and we need to be investing. And Tom Shugart, you know, is going nuts about this in the budget and so forth. But if we want to have this kind of force projection, we need to understand what those costs are and pay them. We are going to pay a lot of money to either reconstruct, or maybe we won't pay a lot of money to reconstruct, the things that have been demolished and damaged in the Iran War. And again, that is what happens in war. But I don't think that we are talking about what the importance of that is.
• 24:09
  Zack Cooper: So, if it's harder for us to protect our allies' territory and partners' territory, right, because we have these advancements in unmanned systems, and those allow large numbers of cheap systems to be targeted even at somewhat longer ranges at ally and partner territories, I think it's going to lead to a set of debates about how do you best respond to that. And one set of arguments is you should have incredibly capable air and missile defenses to protect their territory. If they're going to allow you to use their territory, then you're going to need to protect them. I think the reality, as we've seen in the Gulf, is that that is going to be cost-prohibitive. Very few countries are going to be capable of acquiring the number of interceptors that are needed to defend against these smaller, cheaper systems unless there are massive advances in directed energy or something like that, which would give really deep salvos at lower cost. If that's right, it will push the United States into having to convince allies and partners to allow basing access despite the fact that that basing access will not necessarily protect them in wartime from responses from an adversary. So, I think this is really different than what we assumed in the Cold War, where if the U.S. was using your territory to project power, that also meant that the U.S., you know, was going to put a fighter cap up above your territory, and it was going to protect it. And now the U.S. projecting power from your territory doesn't mean that your territory won't get hit, and in some cases, hit hard. And so, this is just another factor which, you know, Rachel, sort of, points at, but which I think suggests that these discussions are going to be even more difficult in the years ahead, especially when we're talking about ally and partner countries whose populations are worried about getting hit.
• 26:16
  Chris Preble: That was the point that I wanted to pick up on. Melanie, you're absolutely right. The Trump administration demonstrated its lack of seriousness and forethought in not taking appropriate measures to protect bases that they knew were going to be subject to at least the risk of retaliation. But this is a problem that predates the Trump administration. How seriously are we taking the protection of bases? But as we've seen in the Iran War, the United States might have expended enormous effort to protect its bases, but it's not enough to protect bases, including some very soft targets like airports, and hotels, and population centers. And so, sort of, perversely, an extraordinary effort on the part of the United States to defend its assets on allied territories, but not a commensurate effort to defend them, actually does not solve the deeper problem that Metz identifies here, which is allies' reluctance to host us in the first place.
• 27:12
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah. And look, I think there will be. It's been a long, long time, and I haven't had confidence. I do think there will be advances in directed energy, but there won't be enough of it to go around, and there's not enough power to be firing off those systems all the time right now. And you just can't compete with a bazillion incoming drones that may or may not have some explosives on them. And once you start hitting the civilian infrastructure, and I just have to say, Putin has demonstrated they don't care what they're hitting. Like, Iran doesn't care if they're hitting a hospital. They don't care if they're hitting an airport, or a hotel, or a civilian road. And the United States just simply cannot protect all of that. We wouldn't be able to protect it all in the United States if we wanted to. Right now, we're worried about being able to protect runways on bases and so forth. Not even just the assets, but how do you get the assets off the ground if you don't have a runway? So, there are all of these things, and these are going to be hard discussions. They're the same discussions we've been having about aircraft carriers, you know, about whether or not we can keep those, which, of course, I do think that we need to for the time being. And I will say, you're always going to need some of the exquisite stuff. And to me, it's like, what are you defending, and is it worth a three-million-dollar interceptor? And I don't think that we've always been very careful about that. But there are not enough interceptors, as Zack said, to go around, whatever you're paying for them right now. So, there has got to be some strategic discipline here, and I don't know that anybody wants to have this kind of a hard discussion because it's not attractive to allies. It doesn't make the United States look good, and it's hard for us to say out loud what we would defend and what we wouldn't. And I don't know how to make this sound not cruel or callous because I care about every life that is lost. I think that we have lost 14 in this war so far, and six because of that strike on the initial base. But if we believed Iran were the existential threat that it has been discussed to be, would we have taken more risks? I don't know. Would we be so willing to pull our assets out right now if we were as concerned about the missile launchers and the systems and the HEU? Like, am I an advocate of going in and seizing it with ground forces? No. But there was almost no discussion about, you know, what is the cost of a real mission or a real fight going to be? And our tolerance for taking loss is very, very low as the threat has gotten increasingly higher.
• 29:49
  Chris Preble: Right. Again, this is a recurring theme in U.S. foreign policy, which is many dangers which are not existential to the United States are existential to our allies and partners. So, how do we deal with that differential in interest? And the answer is we try to win wars or conduct military operations on the cheap, knowing that the lack of strong public support for it is a constraint on how we carry out operations. And look, this is not a new phenomenon. I think it explains a lot of the use of force, even in, you know, places like Afghanistan, which at least was connected in some way in the early stages to the 9/11 attacks. In this case, the case of the war in Iran, you did not have strong public support for this war, and you didn't even have a rally-around-the-flag effect that you normally would see in past conflicts. I think partly that's a function of our polarization, but it's also because I think the administration didn't make a very good case, and I think there wasn't a very strong case to be made in the first place. But actually, this pivots to the one last point I wanted to make a little bit about how you mobilize public opinion. And Metz doesn't go into this in the article, but I wanted to call it out. She says that wartime access, in essence, makes every state in the world, no matter how far from American shores, the United States' next-door neighbor. And that's right. And then I say, "But is that a good thing?" Because by that logic, U.S. preemption might be warranted in the event of an imminent attack against foreign territory, that is, foreign territory that is hosting American bases. And we saw this rationale, sort of, invoked at the start of the Iran War. And though Trump administration officials were quick to back away from this, initially, Marco Rubio and Speaker Mike Johnson both said that once it was obvious that the Israelis were going to attack Iran and that U.S. forces in the region were going to be subject to attack, then that necessitated the United States' preemptive action. So, in other words, is that necessarily a good thing, that we have U.S. forces in places where they are subject to attack? One line of argument, again, this, sort of, gets into a broader discussion about how tripwires work or not, is that it is precisely the fact that American forces might be involved in a conflict, without prior authorization, that raises the likelihood that Americans will support the war because there will be dead and injured Americans in that conflict. Is this worth pondering for a moment? Does that still function the way we thought it did, or do we need to rethink that?
• 32:21
  Melanie Marlowe: I don't know if it does as much anymore, and maybe it's because there's just not as much support for war as there was. And again, when that Apache helicopter was shot down, Donald Trump's first response was, "They're fine. It's no big deal." And there were hawks out there saying, "He has to respond. Something has to be done." In the end, he came around to that. But he still... His response was to tell Israel to knock it off, and he did lob some missiles, some strikes, for one or two nights. But he wasn't going to let that derail his deal. And this is what I'm talking about, is that we have to think about what our objectives are and what we're willing to risk for it. And maybe if there's an accident, or maybe it's because China's being reckless and, you know, the way that they're flying around American planes, or maybe they do something in the Philippines and people get killed. You know, there was a Filipino sailor last year, I think, that got injured, and people were very alarmed that this was going to spark a bigger conflagration. And I hope that we can have cooler heads. And again, as I value every life and I don't want anyone to be hurt, I don't want anybody killed, but we need to still have a clear-eyed assessment of, you can't just get into a war because China's reckless about how they're tailing you. So, I think at the moment that that would hold true, partly because I don't think that there's been explanations of clear interests. And I don't, for example, see the United States going to war with China over what could be, and I'll say it, portrayed as an accident, or not as maliciously directed against the United States. I'm not saying if there were an actual invasion of Taiwan, the United States wouldn't get involved, or if there were strikes on the Philippines or something worse. But I think that the United States is not in a place where it's looking to go to war with a major power. So, I don't know. Zack might differ.
• 34:19
  Zack Cooper: The way I would frame that, maybe, is slightly different, which is, the risk of conflict in terms of the U.S. supporting allies is often not about whether you're actually intending to escalate, but whether you're accepting an inadvertent risk of escalation. In other words, you're putting your forces in a place where you know that there are some inherent risks, but you're doing that in an effort to shape your opponent's perception of the risk of escalation, and therefore you're intentionally, sort of, taking that risk to provide yourself with more bargaining leverage. I think the challenge here is the Trump administration's approach, as I see it, is sometimes seeming to imply that the U.S. wants less of its forward-deployed troops, you know, less of a tripwire force because they're worried about that risk of escalation. And if that's true, it would suggest to me that our adversaries, like China, are going to have more ability to operate in the gray zone with less risk of escalation. You know, I think we're seeing this right now at a place called Scarborough Shoal, where the Chinese have emplaced a platform. And I think if this were a different administration, we might have seen some pretty risky behavior to try and convince the Chinese not to do that. I think the Trump administration has decided, as Melanie said, that, you know, these sorts of things, they don't want to escalate into larger conflicts. But what it does mean is that you give your opponents the ability to threaten escalation against your allies and your partners in a way that I think is probably going to lead to more coercive activity. Even if it means that the likelihood of conflict escalating is lower, the likelihood of a crisis may actually be a little bit higher right now.
• 36:14
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, I'd agree with that.
• 36:16
  Chris Preble: Yeah. Okay, well, this was a good discussion. Thanks to you both. I'll include, obviously, a link in the show notes. I recommend Rachel's article, Iran and the Hidden Cost of Wartime Access, in Foreign Affairs. I'll also mention, Zack mentioned this, the article she wrote in International Organization with Austin Carson and Paul Poast. We'll include a link in that as well. But it's a really good discussion, and even though Iran is in the headline, it has much broader implications than the Iran War in the Middle East. So, that's ultimately why I chose it. So, thanks, all.
• 36:46
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay, very good. Let's have some grievances. Frank Costanza: "The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you, people. And now, you’re going to hear about it!"
• 36:59
  Chris Preble: All right, so my grievance is with people who claim that to end a war requires a vote of Congress, but to start one does not. And this is, again, not unique to the Iran War. This is a recurring theme in recent American history. And I'm aggrieved about it because, ultimately, what it means is that diplomacy of any kind has to meet a ridiculously high threshold to be successful, whereas war, as we've been discussing for the last 40 minutes, is really damn easy to wage. And I'm sorry, but that is not the way it is supposed to work. And so, just because the United States is able to wage war frequently, and you have so many veto players that make it hard to achieve peace, that does not make it okay. And so, I know people are trying to use this, the alleged end of the Iran War, and pointing to the JCPOA and saying, "Well, you know, the JCPOA wasn't ratified, and that's why it failed." And it's like, yeah, it wouldn't have been ratified. So, what does that tell you? It means that a president of the United States, most presidents of the United States, will never be able to negotiate any kind of a peace agreement with any country that is seen as an adversary or enemy of the United States. That cannot be the way we function. Peace should not be that hard.
• 38:13
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay, Zack.
• 38:14
  Zack Cooper: I don't know if this grievance is with myself or with Tulsi Gabbard, maybe with both. So, last show, I tried to take the high road, and despite having been consistently very critical of Tulsi Gabbard's work at the Director of National Intelligence, I gave her an atta because I was genuinely sad for her that her husband is, it sounds like, quite sick and, you know, was, as I said, trying to take the high road. And I was rewarded over the last few days with her using her last few days in office to reinforce insane Russian propaganda about global U.S. support for bio labs with information that was, like, directly out of Moscow's playbook and, in many cases, I think is just plain false. And yet now she has reinforced these messages, and you saw others like Anna Paulina Luna and people who the Russians use as, sort of, stooges, reinforce these messages. So, lesson learned. I guess I should have just gone with my first instinct, which was to say goodbye without thanking her for her service. But, you know, just pretty crazy on your way out the door from running, theoretically, the entire U.S. intelligence community to just turn around and stab basically that whole community in the back by releasing false information to support your opponent's insane propaganda claims.
• 39:49
  Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, very good. Okay, wholeheartedly agree with that. Okay. Well, my grievance is a little long, but there's a lot that's been piling up. I mentioned in a show or two ago that the Brits have been on my mind for a long time for a grievance, and every time they get pushed out by something else. And I thought they might this time, too, because, you know, the FCAS got canceled. France and Germany, shockingly, don't agree on work share and design and everything else. So, I guess Germany is looking for new planes. But Starmer is not getting out of it this time. So, now I just have to say, I have strong British creds. I am an unrepentant Anglophile. London is my favorite city on the planet. I spell defense with a C. Our friends there produce brilliant work. But they've had a succession of five prime ministers quickly. In fact, I was cleaning out a box the other day and found my program from the AEI dinner a few years ago, where the not-yet Prime Minister Boris Johnson was the speaker at that dinner. Now, rumors of the survivability of Starmer's government, just two years into his tenure, have been swirling for a year. And he came in, don't forget, with this massive Labour majority. But they have huge defense problems. They have approved this Chinese embassy. They want to give away the Chagos Islands, which Donald Trump actually has floated buying. So, both of those things where the United States is implicated. Their NATO spending is near the bottom. There are now really grave concerns about the survivability of AUKUS. They had a strategic defense review that was released exactly a year ago, and they have had 62 recommendations that the government completely accepted. They have done nothing about. And the lead author, Lord Robertson, two months ago, finally came out and made some statements about this and said that the government is suffering from a corrosive complacency. So, their defense investment plan, which I thought was going to be the end of my grievance about a week ago, that still has not been released. And that is a really big problem because they need to know where they're going to be putting money and how much money they're going to have. And finally, last week, the Defense Secretary John Healey quit because Starmer was unable and Chancellor Reeves is unwilling, he said, to commit the resources the nation needs to defend the country at a time of rising threats. Now, someone messaged me and said, "Who's going to be up next for that?" And I said, "Well, the natural fit would be Al Carns, but he's not going to do it. There's no way he's going to ruin his big opportunity in this." And I was right about that. And not only did he not join the government, he actually resigned his position as Armed Forces Minister and has since given several scathing interviews talking about the lack of seriousness of the government to fund defense, and this $28 billion that they're asking for over the next four years. And they won't even come up with that, which, to the United States, the American mind can literally not comprehend that. We're so blessed here. But he has talked in his interviews not just about defense, but he has talked about energy and how that is the foundation of everything else, that you have to have energy before you can have security, and that they're going to miss out on the AI boom, and that they are going to lose their sovereignty because other countries are going to get ahead on that. Now, I have to say, as I've said before, that the net-zero fanatic Ed Miliband, who's the Energy Secretary, is a national security threat, and he will not make any trade-offs. And I just want to say, last week, the United States had an IPO that was two trillion dollars. We are launching and catching rockets. We are building things. We are doing things. We have a bazillion space startups, and I know that investment in the UK has gotten better. But he is trying to figure out how to take away towel warmers from people. The disparity could not be any more stark. So, I just want to say that in the first Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton asks if governments will be made from accident and force or reflection and choice, and I'm getting seriously, desperately worried that the UK is going to be forced into really ugly compromises and situations in the coming future. So, I am begging you. There's a very good article from John Bew from The Spectator in April that I've been holding onto, where he, again, opposes the de-growthers who want to rob the country of its mental energy, its discipline, its ambition, all of the things that it can do, and I am begging the Starmer government, set it free. So, coming up on the 250th anniversary and our break with the Brits, maybe because I think we have inherited such a wonderful political and cultural legacy from them, I love them, and we have truly had each other's backs, and I want to have their backs here. So, please, please get some sensible policy.
• 44:19
  Chris Preble: Get your act together. Still an Anglophile.
• 44:22
  Melanie Marlowe: I am. That is tough love.
• 44:25
  Chris Preble: Melanie's still an Anglophile, but she's annoyed. Tough love.
• 44:30
  Melanie Marlowe: And they can turn around and complain about how much debt we're in. So, I understand the difference there, too. So, okay. All right, atta, Chris.
• 44:39
  Chris Preble: Hey, my atta goes to all those Americans, and I should say Mexicans and Canadians, who are welcoming fans from all over the world to watch the World Cup. And I want to emphasize, even if the Trump administration is not doing those things, and even if the Trump administration continues to be a pain in the neck to Canada and Mexico, because here's the thing, gang. We're coming up on the 250th, and I'll have a thing to say about that here in a minute, but the United States of America is more than the U.S. government, way more than the U.S. government. And so, if, by design or by malice or just by incompetence, if the Trump administration is sending a message to the rest of the world that they can go to hell, we Americans can still send a different message, and I would like to see us do that. So, I'm loving the World Cup already, and I'm really looking forward to the next couple weeks. I think it's going to be really exciting and a lot of fun, and I hope many other Americans join me in welcoming these people to the United States to watch their teams compete.
• 45:44
  Melanie Marlowe: Yes, it's wonderful. I told other people a week ago I was going to have that be my atta, but I didn't tell Chris and Zack, so Chris gets it.
• 45:53
  Chris Preble: I got it.
• 45:54
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay. Zack.
• 45:56
  Zack Cooper: All right. Sticking on the sports theme, I don't know if this is, again, an atta or a grievance for myself. Last week, or two weeks ago, when we recorded, I was fairly confident that the New York Knicks were not going to win the NBA championship. As I was reminded by several listeners of the show, who I saw in person recently, who believed that I was going to be wrong, and I have been wrong. So, the atta goes to the Knicks. I thought for a moment when President Trump went to game three in New York that he was going to save me from myself because the New York Knicks, after being completely unbeatable for most of the playoffs, then lost this one game in New York, and they should have lost the second game in New York. But President Trump was not able to save me, and unfortunately, the New York Knicks have won the NBA championship, so I guess they're going to have to get an atta.
• 46:59
  Melanie Marlowe: Very begrudging.
• 47:02
  Chris Preble: Very.
• 47:03
  Zack Cooper: Yes, very.
• 47:05
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay. Well, my quick atta is first Jared Isaacman on the rollout for the next set of Artemis astronauts. And I have to say, if George Glass has the best ambassador Twitter feed or X feed, Isaacman has the most optimistic administration feed. And also, kudos to him for firmly responding to people complaining that there isn't a woman. There was an absolutely amazing, outstanding woman in the last group of astronauts, and he explained that this is the class that's going through, and this is the batch that we have, and there will be women in future missions. And I take him at his word on that, and it's always funny for me to laugh at the people who mocked Mitt Romney for the binders full of women comments when they're the ones that want the binders full of women. And then my second atta is to my niece Miriam, who longtime listeners know has a genetic condition called Myhre syndrome, and she has a ton of struggles, but she is such a trooper and works so hard. And she is seven years old. She's turning eight in September, but she made her swim team. And she's not the fastest, but she finishes every single race, and I am really proud of her. So, I love her.
• 48:12
  Chris Preble: Yay.
• 48:13
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay. Well, what do you have coming up?
• 48:16
  Chris Preble: So, to celebrate the Fourth of July, I will not be here. Zack and Melanie will be joined by one of my Stimson colleagues. It will be a surprise for all of you listeners. And before I forget, because Melanie usually has this in the tagline, I have returned to the social media site formerly known as Twitter. I am now @RealChrisPreble. So, if you used to follow the person @CAPreble, follow @RealChrisPreble, and I will try to resume my activities on that hellscape known as X, but no, genuinely, I do still learn a lot from following people, and so give me a follow and I'll follow you back.
• 49:01
  Melanie Marlowe: Okay. Zack, anything interesting?
• 49:04
  Zack Cooper: Let's see. Yeah, good conversations here in Tokyo so far, and I'm heading to India later in the week, so that'll be fun. And then we'll be just back from Portugal when we record next. So, yeah, I know. I've had fun summer trips. I do have two pieces just out. So, one in Foreign Policy with Mira Rapp-Hooper, arguing that our allies in Asia need to start thinking about a plan B, kind of, the way that European allies have been thinking about a plan B. And then another piece, which should be out a couple of days before listeners are going to hear this. So, the piece is from the National Bureau of Asian Research, and it's a longer report with some Japanese, Korean, and Australian scholars looking at changing views of extended deterrence in Asia. So, I'll try and put both of those in the show notes for folks that might be interested.
• 49:57
  Chris Preble: Fantastic.