Transcript

The Flying Officer · I Believe

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to I Believe, where we talk about America.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: The watch is quiet.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: Dark.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Day and night you don't know the difference.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Every 12 hours you set the clock.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: If it's more than a second off, fast or slow, it's out of spec.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: And you have to set all three clocks at once.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Three clocks, one second?
0:52
SPEAKER_00: I hear that and feel like it's important.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I suspect you're going to tell me it didn't feel that way.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: You're just setting the clock.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: It's standard.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Wherever we were in the world, we all had to agree on what time it was.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: I was a nuclear weapons officer for 21 years.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: For two of them, I commanded one of America's nine squadrons that keep nuclear missiles on alert and stand ready, day and night.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: You get used to thinking in a common reference time.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Somebody you're working with could be six time zones away from you, but you still need to know what time it is for both of you.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Zulu time.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: You'll have flashbacks, stories that pop into your head whenever some random event happens.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: One of those that caught my attention this week was this new Gale watch, The Flying Officer.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: It's only been out a couple of weeks.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen one in person, and I don't know that I ever will.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: I've been looking at pictures of the face.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: It's an old name.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: The first one came out in 1939.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Harry Truman wore one.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
1:51
SPEAKER_01: There are reference cities around the dial.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: It's a 12-hour face, but when everyone somewhere on the globe operates on a single reference time, you're thinking about a 24-hour day and a 24-hour globe.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: So two places can share an hour position, 12 hours apart.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: London is the reference to start with.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Move clockwise or to the right on the watch face, and it's like moving east around the globe.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Geneva, then Cape Town, then Nairobi.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: Go the other way, west into the Atlantic, and you've got the Azores.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: You're reading it like a map.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes, the globe on your wrist.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: After 21 years it gets ingrained.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: You think about people being in different time zones.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: It's also just an interesting watch.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Most of that job was waiting, alert, the watch.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: The capability is there, it's ready.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: And the whole point is that you never use it.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: That followed me to Leavenworth and to the Army's Command and General Staff College.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: Twelve officers in our classroom.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: I was the only Air Force officer.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: There was a Marine, a Canadian armor officer, and everybody else was Army.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: One exercise we worked through was a thought experiment conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: The question was whether we go in and how much we'd commit to a peacekeeping mission.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: One of the factions was openly hostile to the U.S.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: disrupting our activities in the area, threatening terrorist attacks.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: The Marine was confident we should get involved in almost every regional conflict, and that it would be over quick.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Most of the room said yes.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: I said no.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: I almost always said no.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Wait.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: One country punishing people in another?
3:30
SPEAKER_00: And you said no?
3:31
SPEAKER_01: I did.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Is it a tragedy?
3:34
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: A vital US interest?
3:36
SPEAKER_01: No.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: Would I support partners getting involved?
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Independent action?
3:41
SPEAKER_01: No.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Partners tend to wait for us.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Rwanda was a hundred days.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: I know.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: There's a question of dependency there.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And then we'd get to something I thought was important enough.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Then what I was willing to accept in casualties was much higher than anybody else in the room.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: That sounds backwards.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: The man who never wants to go is the one who will pay the most once he's there.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Because I was looking at the objective.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: What were we going to achieve?
4:05
SPEAKER_01: The others were more willing to get into smaller conflicts.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: As a nuclear weapons guy, I'd look at those and think, we're not going to have a decisive long-term impact.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Our effects need to last for 40 years, maybe even a hundred.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: If a major United States interest was threatened, that was different.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: But those are much bigger conflicts.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: World wars.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Major conflicts involving our partners.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you that being able to intervene isn't a reason to.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: But decisive is a high bar.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you walked the tunnels the North Koreans dug under the DMZ?
4:37
SPEAKER_01: I have.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Nothing was decided there.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: No treaty.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: An armistice.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Signed in 1953, and two armies still looking at each other across it.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: By your test, Korea was a waste.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: No, it wasn't.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: 70 years of soul.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Then decisive is the wrong word.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Maybe durable.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: Does it last?
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Korea has.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: And we're still paying to make it hold.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: That's a cost I'd accept for an ally, for a result that lasts that long.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: But there's a cost to every one of those.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: When you use resources in one regional conflict, you don't have them for something bigger.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: And we start from an extraordinary position.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Oceans on both sides, no neighbor about to invade and subdue us.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: That gives us room to be patient.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: America will never lose a war, because nobody can come here and conquer us.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Just this week we signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland to increase our presence on that critical piece of geography while denying China and Russia access, further protecting American security interests in our region.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: There's a jump there.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Keeping the homeland secure and winning a war abroad are two different things.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: I agree that's a logic jump.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is that no other country is going to subdue the United States on our shores.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: When we go somewhere else to fight, of course we can lose.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: We have a long logistical trail.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: We are at a disadvantage sustaining what we're doing.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: And we can have enormous difficulty achieving our objectives.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Which puts the weight back on the objective.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: What counts as success, and can the force we're using produce it?
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Our strength is in restraint, in having the capability and not always exercising it.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: Take Iran.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: We've been at war with Iran since the last day of February.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Going on seven months.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about Cyrus the Persian this week, and how far back that history goes.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: About 2600 years.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: They aren't going anywhere.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: Whatever we do over there, they'll be living there when we've gone home.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: The country isn't going anywhere.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: This government might.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: It hasn't yet.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: We can blow things up.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: We're blockading their ports right now.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: We can do a lot of things to hurt Iran.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: If we don't get a durable American result out of it, what have we achieved?
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think Israel's immediate survival was at risk before this started.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: So why start a war when survival isn't at risk?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Let me make the case straight because somebody should.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: A government that says Israel shouldn't exist was enriching uranium well past what any power plant needs, even though they had never made a bomb.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: If the test is immediate survival, then with a bomb, immediate comes after it's too late.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: You of all people know what one weapon does to a small country.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: I do.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: One weapon on a small country is a tragedy, but the state will survive.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: A lot of that country lives around one city.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: I know what I'm saying.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: If Iran ever used one, the world would stand against them.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: Israel would survive.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: That government wouldn't, and it has spent more than 40 years making sure it survives.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: That's not a government looking to die.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: And remember, Iran never built a bomb.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Our own intelligence says they had a weapons program and shut it down in 2003.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: Year after year, the same people said they hadn't restarted it, it's not in their best interest, and we had limits on them.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: Inspectors in the buildings.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: We walked away from that in 2018.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: The inspectors didn't stop them from arming Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: No.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: And Israel has been dealing with that.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: It has plenty of capability to defend itself, which America continues to support.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't see it as a threat to the survival of the state.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: And what's the alternative?
8:14
SPEAKER_01: That we should preemptively attack every state that threatens a partner?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Then we disagree about where the line is.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: We do.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: But wherever you put the line, you still have to answer what the war achieves.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: How do we end this on terms favorable to the United States?
8:30
SPEAKER_01: This conflict in Iran could go on for a dozen years.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't think we can count on them giving up because we've made them suffer enough.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: People under bombs don't quit.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: London didn't, Hanoi didn't, Tokyo didn't.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: They dig in, and they blame whoever's dropping the bombs.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: Over there, suffering can even be seen as legitimacy, as righteousness.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: The more pain we inflict, the more of it the regime gets to claim.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: They quit in 1988.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Khomeini took the ceasefire with a rock.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: He said it was like drinking poison, and he drank it.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: After eight years.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: After eight years.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: That's my dozen.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: And a family bearing a son doesn't feel what the government tells it to feel.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Fair.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: They aren't one thing.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: But look at what each side will put up with.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Our prices go up, and we vote out the party responsible.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Their people are dying, their oil isn't moving, and they're still shooting at our ships.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: One of their lawmakers said it this month.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: America is far away, so America doesn't see this war as existential.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: They do.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: So we can't assume more missiles buy more of the outcome we want.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: We may just be spending our strength.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't have an answer to that one, so name the outcome.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Favorable terms could mean a lot of things.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Ships moving freely through the Strait of Hormuz, a predictable Iranian government that doesn't threaten other countries in the region.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: I think that's it.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Is the strait still ours to care about?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Jimmy Carter said we'd go to war for the Gulf.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Vital interests, that was 1980, and we were buying their oil.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: We produce so much of our own now.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that the Middle East is as important to us as it was.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Oil trades in one world market.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: The strait closes and the price goes up at a pump in Wyoming.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: We watched it happen this year.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: So we still have an interest.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: And everything you listed is a change in behavior.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: None of it requires Iran to like us.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't think we get past the hostility, the regimes, at a minimum.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: We've meddled in their affairs too long for them to forget it.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Then a deal has to work with the distrust still in it.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: And we have to offer something that makes keeping it worthwhile.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what we have to offer that we're willing to give up.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to pull all our bases out of the Middle East?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to abandon Israel because Iran wants us to.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Those are enormous asks.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: There are smaller bargains.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Money for specific limits we can check.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: That's your Kenan essay.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: A country that's profiting from an arrangement has something to protect.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Friendship not required?
10:54
SPEAKER_01: No.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: And I'd take something like President Obama's agreement again.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: Ease the economic pressure in exchange for nuclear limits and inspectors.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: We should be willing to accept terms like that.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: What I don't hear much of is the Iranian side.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: What do you think they're looking for?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Whether the benefit is dependable.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: We left the last agreement in 2018, and the inspectors said they'd been keeping it.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: We want to know they're keeping the limits.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: They want to know that keeping the limits gets them what they were promised.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: Go on.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: So it's a question about us.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Can we hold a bargain through a change of precedence?
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Your patience applies to keeping a deal, not only to making one.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: What does dependable mean to you?
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Something they can use.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Picture being told you can sell oil, but no bank will process the payment because the bank thinks sanctions are coming back.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Permission on paper, nothing in the account.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Dependable doesn't mean unconditional.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: It means the terms for keeping it or losing it are clear.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: What they say in public is a lot bigger than that.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: Tolls on tankers through hormuz lift sanctions.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: Our base is out of the Middle East.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: And the hostility to Israel existing isn't going away.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Some of that's an opening bid.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Some of it they won't move on.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: We don't know which is which, and we can't assume.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: And we still have to make it hold.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: I think that takes other actors.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: I go back to the DMZ.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Somebody standing in between.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Korea's an odd model.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: That command is American-led, it isn't neutral.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: But the idea travels.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: A third party, both sides accept, so nobody has to take the other's word.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Then the monitors report our violations as loudly as theirs.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a result of this war we won't be able to avoid.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: And it has to hold after the people who signed it are gone.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Ours and theirs.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to the Zulu time thing.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: What happens to the clocks when you go off watch?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Somebody else sets them.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: Every twelve hours.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: And if nothing happens?
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Then it was a good watch.