welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson John arquilla is a professor of Defense analysis at the United States Naval Postgraduate School and the author of a number of books including worst enemy The Reluctant transformation of the American Military Dr AR quilla's most recent publication is an article on the current issue of foreign policy entitled the new rules of War derive John from your book worst enemy or building on the thesis correct that's right Victor Davis Hansen is a fellow of the institution a classicist and Military historian and the author of many books the most recent of which is just out the father of us all war and history ancient and modern segment one have we got it all wrong from John aril's article in foreign policy the new rules of War I'm quoting you John a decade and a half after a colleague and I coined the term Net War the United States is still behind the curve our big ships big guns and big battalions are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future close quote let's begin with a definition of a term which is not just a term but your thesis for some years now Net War it's the way networks make war and what's a network it's a loose connection between people a lot of folks think a network is how you're wired we think David ronfeld and I who came up with this think that a network is more like what anthropologists think of when they say networks the social connections between people whether they're talking to each other whether they have Runners going between them or they're using cellular phones so that's the network and now what does that imply for Warfare uh I have to say when you say Network to me I think immediately Facebook yeah cyers space yeah exactly and that's certainly one of the things that has empowered these social connections and they've overturned tyrannies in a number of countries for example in the last 15 years which is something that David and I predicted the Velvet Revolution in Eastern Europe the orange revolution in Ukraine the color revolutions I I think even the the breaking of one party power in the Republic of Korea is a good example of the use of these Technologies for social networking the wires matter but it's the social connections we thought that were going to be most powerful and we thought that those who would be most empowered would be the terrorists particularly as we wrote back in '96 this little group called Al-Qaeda which seemed to be very devoted to the idea of creating a Global Network so against that heavy tanks aircraft carriers and such were going to be um very very bulky too expensive and not very effective in taking them down the real question however is does the network scale up to fighting the larger Wars that inevitably will come I know Victor's written about big Wars can come again and surely they will and uh my hypothesis is that this new approach will actually do better against old style big war opponents it's going to give us a chance to compete with the terrorists so you believe you believe that technology has fundamentally altered the terms of Engagement now and forever more or you believe that technology has made possible one new form of warfare which is likely to expand and be developed by this or that group alongside what we think of as traditional or conventional Warfare I I think yes to both if that's if that's okay uh every era of technological change has implied new forms of military organization and new doctrines just as the tank and the plane and the radio came together to give us Blitz C and you had to have that Armored Division where you concentrated that hitting power in order to get the maximum effect right well this is a time where instead of concentrating all your power in one place you want to distribute it as widely across many nodes as you can Al-Qaeda has a relatively small number of operatives but they're spread out everywhere and one of the things we've learned about this modern globalized world is that the destructive and disruptive power of even very small numbers can be quite great and this is on the flip side of course Donald Rumsfeld understood this when he came in as Secretary of Defense and suggested that we needed to get smaller quicker closer and maybe we can talk a little bit about the R so John is on to something profound there right yeah I think he is I I think the question that um I don't think anybody would question John's thesis I think the where you'll have people who would be skeptical is to what degree is this antithetical to or come at the expense of more traditional assets and can these tradition assets be fit into John's model because I think John and everybody realize that if tomorrow North Korea comes across the 38th parallel or China storms into Taiwan we're going to need Superior aircraft Firepower and the question is I think John's making the argument as I understand it right not that you don't need a carrier not you don't need oh no John is making quite an anti- current Pentagon but I don't think necessarily maybe anti to the to the further escalation of that type of acquisition and employment but I think he's arguing that the um air sea and military forces which will be conventional and have to be used an overwhelming number would have a different is that a different imprint to them oh very certainly they they do it's uh you know you put your finger on the key question Victor what what do we need to fight the big war and I've made a point in this article that what we have does not scale down very well we have to send a lot of troops to go after a few people you say you I mean it's pretty provocative here and quite unambiguous the United States is still behind the curve oh yeah so let me put it to you in Afghanistan in 2001 we used Special Forces couple hundred guys on horses calling in strikes that wasn't and we overthrew the Taliban okay and in the first three weeks in Iraq we go storming up to Baghdad toel light force moving very fast and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein in 3 weeks so doesn't that indicate that the Pentagon has currently configured is at least open to this kind of thinking right no no question in the article I say we're behind the curve and what I'm trying to suggest is we live in a time where unlike the the Cold War was characterized by an arms race in in nuclear weapons right we're now in an era that's characterized by an organizational race to build networks and it seems to me that that's where we're behind the curve yes we did build a network in Afghanistan but then after the a teams left we went back to building a huge base in bogram replete with a Burger King and other amenities and uh surging troops out of bogram to the troubled points but it would take them many hours to get there whereas in the first lay down of Special Forces all over the country we were able to respond very quickly and so we slowed ourselves down we got bigger and slower that's why I said we have a military that doesn't scale down uh very well and I'm thinking that if we build this more networked Force it'll already be able to deal at The Irregular level and I believe it'll be able to scale up very nicely to fight the bigger War John you organized this uh much of your thinking and certainly the article in foreign policy around three epigrams many and small beats few and large finding matters more than flanking swarming is the new surging let's take each of these and see what Victor thinks of them from the new rules of War your article here the greatest I'm quoting the greatest problem traditional militaries face today is that they are organized to wage big Wars and have difficulty orienting themselves to fight small ones now here Victor perhaps I'm quoting John perhaps the best example of a many and small military that worked against foes of all sizes question of scalability was the Roman legion explain that to my classist friend Victor Davis hansome he can probably explain it to me the failan was a large single Mass the failan of Alexander I think one of the reasons and hopefully you'll come to our school and teach about this but I think one of the reasons that skipio wins the Battle of Zama is that Hannibal is still using that rather bulky faank fail would be how many men at under arms could it be four five 6,000 at where no in in average fail lanks yeah by the classical times of f should be 6,000 6,000 they were 4500 to 5,000 yeah and a legion often had 6,000 too but the legion was kind of in checkerboard fashion and it could reconfigure and reform in many different ways that the fail lanks didn't have it was the Lego block of Ancient Warfare ni combined aerial and hand to hand so a person would throw a pilum and they would get the advantage of an aerial weapon and then they would approach with the Gladius and we know from simulations that the Gladius had more penetrating power and cutting flesh double-edged and there's some graphic descriptions of cepol and the Battle of pida where a fank of the helenistic brand fought at Legion and the Greeks were shocked at the level of wounds and the type of wounds they never encountered that before because they were missing you know arms legs that a person could take off so I think John's right about that it was a more flexible it was based on the fings per individual unit in some ways of shock because they could get together could always yeah they they scaled up it was flexible oh can I by the way John I think in your we just discussed Afghanistan and Iraq in the previous segment and it sounds as though you approve broadly of Donald rum very much so Rumsfeld understood small fast swarm but the secretary of defense is able to impose this on the Pentagon establishment for only so long and when he has to turn to other matters because the secretary of defense is responsibility for a wide array and you go back to war making the commanders in the field the chain of command they go back to what they know which is massive which is mass material and is that was that you is that a fair comment I think that on to something but the pentag think that people had seen Panama and they'd seen Granada and they'd seen the Balkan air campaign right and the idea was people you mean the generals yes and the idea was if you have a traditional division of 16,000 men say 1950 and you have a traditional division of 16,000 men in 2000 well the 2000 division through air support laptops can bring an amount of Firepower out of a magnitude probably of a thousand especially when these weapons are laser guided so the idea was according to rumf As I understood it why in the world would you want the same number of Crusader platforms or all of these things when through electronic connections this 16,000 man division can bring a whole array of Firepower and become ipsofacto 10 times 50 times more lethal now his opponent said okay we grant you that you you guys went in and you took out the Taliban you took out Saddam the opponents believe brought ly speaking in what came to be known as the Powell Doctrine Cole and Powell they did you go in in Mass but what they did they they they tweaked that correct not quite they said that but there was no criticism of the three brilliant 3-we takeown of Saddam or the six we takedown of the Taliban by that group they couldn't say we should have taken 300,000 where the the argument came in it was postao argument okay you guys can use these new connections or networks how however People Are People human nature is unchanging when you want to pacify the countryside you need boots on the ground so you need 300 I think John was and the school at rumfelt were arguing is okay but the problem was not sheer numbers it was how this 160,000 who were so brilliant in taking out you know a half a million man army were used as occupation constables that's where the key is can all right so let me make sure that let me sum up the argument as best I understand it and try another analogy we we're hearing a great deal now about cloud computing where your software your documents and so forth exist exist in it's all out there you open the laptop and you can bring them it's almost as though in some way you're arguing that more and more and more the lethal power of the United States exists in a cloud and you can put small units on the ground and they can summon it to strike strike strike is that is that something like what you're saying it's part of the story or that apply only to air power really it's I I think it's a good point because we have artillery and other capabilities that aren't Just Aircraft that can do exact that can be I like the cloud metaphor a lot I think it's very good Peter but I I think also these small units I'm talking about can have and their own version of the Gladius and the and the peum there is a right way to equip them so that they are actually very tough in close combat because the kind of thing Victor's talking about after the Thunder Run to Baghdad was a very traditional Close Quarters kind of Engagement against a people ready to mount so so all right now we now Victor's making a Victor's saying here's where the real argument was if I understand it correctly fine move quickly to Baghdad Rumsfeld move small light fine but then you run into the Insurgency things go sideways for three years and the argument is we had too few troops on the ground we went in too light and that argument seemed to me to gain ground with the public at large with Capital Hill with the press and your your argument is it was it was totally mistaken oh yeah without question U I think what happened after that Thunder Run and after the regime was taken down is that um the troops who were there were basically concentrated into a few large bases here's that few large instead of distributed in a many and small manner because it was too dangerous to distribute them right well I don't think so at all it's there there were um at the day that that statue was pulled down right well over half of the Iraqi people saw the Americans as liberators uh it was about a year later that that number had dropped to single digits but we had we had a great opportunity and and I think it was missed because it was misunderstood at that point they thought well the job is done the sort of traditionalists thought well we ran our Blitz cre and and so maybe so you maybe you con have a few places of concentrated power but You' disperse units of 50 in a thousand places across Iraq many in small and and by the way that's how we ended up doing a lot better in Iraq in 2004 I started lobbying for an outpost Network and talking to the insurgents themselves to get them to switch sides because over half that population was was with us and by George that's what turned things around you're nodding you agree you buy all of this right well or not I have a problem with the traditional um defense of why the surge worked people say the surge I I can't think of a war where 30 ,000 troops made that much of a difference so we go from you know 130 to 160 or whatever the numbers were but there were a lot of other factors one of them obviously is what John's talking about getting people out when you went first time I went to Iraq I went to a compound second time I wrode around a Humvee that went to apartment buildings people were out there but there were other classical things that worked that nobody wanted to talk about one of them was just this number of attrition I I asked one officer why is things settling down why are the people in Anor and he said we killed a lot of these blank blank blank and after 5 years there were a lot of tribal leaders who would tell you that they'd lost their son their cousin and it was attrition that helped and it coincided with the surgeon troops the other was the message that we sent the world and the Iraqis that that 30,000 was symbolic that we weren't going to pull out but the actual uh numbers themselves I don't think would have been determinant without these other co-actors going on where we are now in the intellectual debate is um I think everybody understands as I said that rumfelt Doctrine really worked with the Taliban and then this the Kagan School came back and said no no no you needed boots on the ground and they rejected that and now we're in a third level of development and it says the boots on the ground uh may or may not have helped but it was how the boots on the ground were used we didn't take the Surge and use them the way that the other first 130,000 were used we took the Surge and then that Surge and the 130 all started acting differently and that that begs the question had they taken the 130 and had them dispersed out would they have needed the extra 30 all right segment three finding matters more than flanking from your article here John the new rules of War ever since ancient times quote hitting the enemy in the flank has been the most reliable maneuver in Warfare but the enemy of the future will have to be found before it can be fought yeah explain that in a few sentences well look there's over two dozen Wars going on around the world today they're all insurgencies or Guerilla Wars or protracted periods of terrorism and every country where they're fighting they're vastly outnumbered by the security forces there police and military but the problem is you can't find them and if you can't find them you can't fight them okay so what what you make the point in this article that as the as we moved for North to Baghdad the Iraqi Army 400,000 strong just disappeared mostly yeah and then a lot of those people came back some months later as insurgents all right so what I'm trying to tease out here is what's new about this Napoleon went into Russia and the Russians backed up and backed up and backed up and then just disappeared and let winter come in and then started attacking attacking during the long retreat that's that's a couple centuries ago VI Kong same thing they'd hit and then disappear into the jungle so where does the new techn what's new what's distinctive about this moment well this moment is in all these 24 Wars there's no Battle of borodino as there was when Napoleon invaded Russia it's it's as though he went in and he never found anybody basically and so you what does this imply for the disposition of forces well we've reached a point now in the world given 12 battle carrier groups and this amazingly lethal conventional forces it's very hard maybe China will change it but for the near future people are not willing to have a traditional Western conventional the last person who tried it was like a turkey at Thanksgiving Saddam Hussein in ' 91 and an open FL you know he was just obliterated and and mosovich as well so the question is we're not going to get too lucky we're not going to find an idiot like mosovich or Saddam doesn't mean we don't need those forces we do but the enemy has understood throughout 2500 years there's a formula a menu to checking conventional Western military power you can take weapons from the West be parasitical IEDs everything in there is you couldn't get a Taliban scientist to design any of those components they're all parasitic Taliban scientist is anti-war movements at home Michael Moore was worth in a division or you could not him but Cindy Sheen in that movement or getting France to vote against us in the UN dividing the west or asymmetry as we talked you get a guy who's mailing his uh son every night back in Kansas and he's a army colonel and he gets killed in human terms it's still a moral loss but the way that each side will reckon that loss the $250,000 for the ba all of the accoutrements that get that army guy up so what we're seen in this complex world is that more and more and this has happened throughout history with the macedonians or Romans Crusaders there's people who do not want to fight a a western type of War because they understand where it leads Superior discipline organization fire power will destroy them and they find ways um and they start a challenge and response cycle and then the West has to come up and say you know what we're going to have a conventional military but we're going to have to divert some of our resources and that's where the argument goes to counter the counter response you mentioned China he did it not me so now let's just go ahead because as I read it I'm a total Layman and if I just am factually incorrect if I ask a stupid question tell me it's stupid if I'm factually incorrect tell me I'm factually incorrect but as I read China they are super curb at playing the game of push and Retreat push and Retreat diplomatically militarily they'll rattle their Sabers across the straight of Taiwan from Taiwan and we send a carrier group through that straight and they back up the next day they go twice as they exactly so what has finding matters more than flanking or small and fast versus big and slow what has that got to do with China well I would be very troubled if we got to a point where uh China were going to invade Taiwan or let's say they would forment a revolution on the island first and then try to go and Aid those who are there we would send our carriers into the straight and let me tell you they wouldn't begin this process unless they had a ready array of the small and the many that is these brilliant mind Chinese would oh yes they're building a small and many navy right now as Victor said they're not building our kind of Navy so they got a brilliant mind Peter that sits down and waits for a big ship to come nearby and it Maneuvers itself right under the Keel of the ship to break its back they've developed a torpedo that presumably the straight will be filled with that filled with it U super cavitation Torpedoes that create a little bubble of air across the front that allows them to travel at hundreds of knots no countermeasure to that supersonic hundreds of knots hundreds of knots hundreds of knots no countermeasure that's like bullet speed underwater and a little bit less but yeah real real real real fast and then supersonic anti- ship missiles which are you know at plus uh speed so they're building a capability for that I would rather go into that war with our own small and many and I'm pleased to say the Navy is looking in this direction both with remotely operated uh vehicles and a variety of other capabilities that may be we we shouldn't talk about too openly right now but for the most part the response will be the carrier uh strike group and and here's basically the way it works an aircraft carrier strike group has about 90% of its cost dedicated to defending the carrier 10% one platform is so expensive and so crucial billion for the carrier and 20 billion the new on will be about 10 billion 20 billion for the the group yeah it's it's incredibly expensive and increasingly vulnerable and everyone realizes this that's why so much expenditure is to protecting the carrier I'm interested in this uh if you get to small and many and think about the finding capability uh then you're talking about engaging and protecting Taiwan in a very different sort of way I think the goal would be the same right we have a commment not to allow that country to be overrun how we do it I think can be far more efficiently and we can do it far more militarily effectively and I think China it's good you raise the subject of China because they are going to be a profoundly improved military power in the coming decad segment four swarming is the new surging on once again from the new rules of War instead of continually surging large numbers of troops to trouble spots the basic response of a swarm force would be to go Swift in small numbers and strike the attackers at many points close quote so I don't know what you mean in the sense that in reading this article you make an assertion you make an assertion you make an assertion and I'm able to imagine roughly what what that might have meant in Baghdad say or well think about Afghanistan in the beginning so how do we that that's the they went very very quickly and and by the way you'll love we Dro a bunch of guys in by air right only only because Donald Rumsfeld said do it the G there's a point in my book where the book is really about this debate between the traditionalists and the Rumsfeld view Rumsfeld basically says you're going to do this and Bob Woodward reports this in his account of it he said some generals just put their heads on the desk when he when they didn't want to insert the Special Forces they wanted to continue the bombing campaign anyway you so you take these guys and you know we're just talking a a month or so after 911 and these guys are on the ground how many uh 200 11 Special Forces a teams 200 individuals dropped in 11 quite widely dispersed places and you know why they were riding horses in the beginning it was for identification Friend or Foe that's so our attack aircraft would know if it's on a horse don't blow it up if it's in a vehicle just kill all the vehicles and the point is they were all over even I would have found a way to stay on the saddle in those circumstances exactly and uh any anyway U so they're all over the place this Hon don't know where they're going to turn up next and everywhere they go these guys are looking at them and calling in coordinates and getting them blown up and it's an amazing so that would be an example of swarming rather than surging and and I think it's um that will be seen some decades down the road as rumsfeld's Masterpiece I mean he was not in office all that long and he got that campaign pulled together I'm not a you know particular apologist for Donald Rumsfeld but I only met few occasions but this is a guy who saw a glimpse of the future of military Affairs swarming is the new surging Victor we're talking about different phases so I think everybody this is what's so tragic about American politics When Donald Trump when the Taliban were out and when the statue fell Donald Rumsfeld was a rock star he was on the cover of everybody and the people who praised him the loudest would be the people who opportunistically turned on him so that that's another story but the the question is the second phase okay so you get you swarm these people and you crack the morale of the enemy and they filter back out and they're back into weran or they're going across the border in Iran and then you've got to build a civil society because in Afghanistan is distinct from Iraq we didn't kill that many of the enemies this SC them because whether you believe in John's view or you're a traditionalist you have to accept in the mo postmodern world there's certain limitations on Military practice we can't drop we can't firebomb Tokyo like they did March 11th we can't do a dresen we can't do Hamburg we can't obliterate in the way that and that is the classic Roman ingredients for a Roman peace that you'd obliterate humiliate the enemy and you frighten them so much I remember my father's I said to him once when why did how did you land in Tokyo 10 days after the the arm assist and he said they didn't want to look at a b29 they landed and they I thought well didn't they swarm on you or shoot you and I said no we would have gone right back up and started all over again well you can't do that today for a variety of reasons interconnected globalized International morale all of these things good good and bad so what we're talking about now is how can you defeat an En enemy when you can't crush him you can't humiliate him and you can't have a Roman peace and the and the question is I think John's demonstrated that these Network approaches are very effective in taking out really formidable enemies that have all the advantages of you know terrain Logistics everything but where the the debate is today is okay you defeat these people you can't humiliate You Can't Kill Them All now how are you going to ensure the Victory and I hear this is where the number uh question the the traditionals now say okay you guys were brilliant 3 we but you need visible people walking around with Humvees and that's where we are now how do you do that what how many numbers what's the percentage of people per square mile and you argue that the swarming appro or the small approach works even in establishing the peace yeah but I think there's a synthesis here that that's important Victor's absolutely right the 200 individuals of the first phase the Breakthrough in Afghanistan we're not going to be able to secure that Society you do have to have presence in many places swarming takes on a different Hue in in that setting and I'd say Iraq late in 2006 and 2007 when we established the hundreds of outposts was an example of swarming al-Qaeda in Iraq because suddenly we were everywhere and put them on the run and that's when the enormous amount of attrition of the insurgents occurred and we so I I agree that you have to have more for that phase the question is how much more and and as Victor said you know the 30,000 surge in terms of historical terms of Wars that's really not a big reinforcement my point is if only 10% of the people in country were going outside the wire into the Outpost you could use them in this fashion with far fewer troops overall segment five here our our final segment Al last I'd like to name actual problems that we face in the world and ask you what our disposition of forces should be actually what I'd like to ask you is how the disposition of forces should be different from what they now are so we mentioned China earlier I'd like to go back to that and and and continue that discussion John in your article here the new rules of war and foreign policy current issue of foreign policy you describe a disagreement you had with the late Admiral vice admiral art soski and it sounds like the it sounds like Victor and soski have roughly the position Victor saying John's right in many ways John's right but we need those aircraft carriers and you John right uh soski thought Network Centric Warfare could be used to improve the performance of existing tools including aircraft carriers I John arquilla thought that networking implied a whole new kind of Navy close quote describe the Navy we need in the Pacific to deal with China or the Navy we need anywhere right right now most of the Navy is concentrated in these 11 carrier strike groups so it's all the eggs in a relatively small number of baskets I I'd like to see over the coming use by the way calling them eggs Churchill had this wonderful phrase as uh after the battle of Jutland that the offensive in the Navy he was making the point had become uh sort of dominant as opposed to the defensive and he said battleships were now like eggs attacking each other with hammers he said adal Jellico was the only man who could have won or also worn one day right so but this is your point about the aircraft carriers they' become so fragile now one yeah exactly so the the cost of losing any one of them is very very high so I want the Navy to move away from the few large platforms to many many more smaller ones smaller carriers what sure smaller carriers we don't we have 10 Marine Transport carriers yeah we're we're we're moving in this direction already we we have more than enough air at sea even on these lighter carriers that we're going to have and lighter carriers what is a third of the size of a big carrier or and and about a tenth of the cost it's but a third so it carries couple dozen planes or usually transport say um I don't know 5 to a th000 Marines 500 to a, in the in your Navy of the future you'd have zero big carriers and 100 smaller ones uh you know it's a funny thing in in World War II we began with only half a dozen carriers we ended up with a hundred and most of them were small carriers and they ended up playing crucial roles in both the battle of the Atlantic against the UB boats but also in main battle against the Japanese Imperial Fleet at leat Gulf they uh performed remarkably uh well so yeah light lighter carriers remember now we have uh missiles that we can shoot off of any kind of platform including submarines but also I think the Navy is uniquely poised to take advantage of something that could revolutionize uh what we call the military industrial complex we could make it a military post-industrial complex if we say look the next generation of weapons we need needs to be remotely operated and maybe some some of these things should be autonomous artificially intelligent like the egis system the Tomahawk missile is a robot already so I I think the Navy which is very much wedded to these few large platforms if you took that investment and moved it into these other areas we would do a far better job of protecting Taiwan the Chinese wouldn't even think about going after uh Taiwan Okay so we've talked China in earlier segments we've talked about Iraq and Afghanistan what does your theory imply about the best way to handle Iran well I think there are a couple of issues obviously the situation is one where we cannot feel secure if they acquire nuclear weapons for reasons sort of you're pretty hard line on that one so you don't want them to have nuclear weapons full stop well do you no I don't but but all kinds of people General Abate has said we I can't remember the quotation exactly but he said we can live with a nuclear Iran isn't that close to the quotation he said we could they they were subject to the traditional laws of containment which I don't think that they are well what what if they Downstream one of these weapons to a network see my my problem is I think I'm with you I'm with you if there's ever going to be a nuclear Napoleon he'll be in a terror Network here you have a society with a clear relationship with the terror Network Hezbollah which by the way held its own pretty well with swarming style against the Israelis a few years ago uh assume they get their hands on one or two weapons what what do you do in that situation how do you have mutual deterrence of Network that's my concern so I I I don't think Iran should get these weapons and I and I think let me let me put it to you this way I understand because I've been well informed by a certain military analyst called Victor Davis Hansen that the military options for dealing with Iran right now are very few and very costly and very risky and basically what it comes down to is we don't know too much about where their nuclear program is so to be sure of of uh of whacking it but you got you got a lot of bombing missions a couple weeks of bombing bombing I said that was a terrible choice but it was only it was only better than the other choice yeah of allowing them to get them no I'm all I'm all I'm trying to AR I'll stop arguing and let you make it but as I understand it that's really the the option we face is there some way we or the Israelis could adopt some of these these I think new rules of War suggest a number of ways to go at the problem well first of all we we have to deal with the problem that the Iranians have an explicit swarm Doctrine in the Persian Gulf they do their exercises they put like a thousand guys on Whalers you know with explosives exactly and as Admiral John Bastiani former Vice chairman of the joint Chief said this is the thing that worries him the most in the world so whatever we do is going to require Naval presence in the Persian Gulf so first thing we have to counter the Iranian swarm um the the thousand points of light bombing campaign is I'm I agree with Victor is not likely to work but I think there is under existing international law an ability that we have to maintain the continuity of safeguards under the non-proliferation treaty and that means that we should have the ability to secure some site for inspection at a time and place of our choosing and if in the world we live in today if we were able to do this by these small and special means that we that we talk about here uh and come out with the smoking catron to show the world world that look what the Iranians were doing here then you have the entire world with you so I'm not saying don't don't have a big Invasion don't have a big aerial bombing campaign but use the small and the many to wrong foot does that mean me in the middle of the night on different sites you have to insert people in a manner and at places on the basis of good intelligence at which they will come out with evidence of we do that or the Israelis do it oh I'd say we would do it Victor well I I don't think it's politically tenable I don't I don't think this Administration yeah I mean last time we did that remember 19 uh 80 with uh Jimmy Carter when we had a great great plan it was just poorly ex it's very difficult to do to get the hostages out of Iran yeah I mean we had four helicopters crashed in the I mean it's not it's doable but the problem with all of that is that it requires a political organiz a political Administration that starts with a premise that it might not work and is willing to take that risk and I don't it doesn't seem to me that we're willing to do that the only chance I think that we had a nonviolent was to really get out in front of the protest I mean as I said earlier George Bush would not have been able to appeal in a magnetic charismatic fashion the way Barack Obama did but he he voted pres uh last summer when those demonstrations took place that would have been a disruptive if we had a I had a guy like Obama supporting Grassroots democracies that would have been sent a lot of confusing signals let me ask this question we have Robert Gates Secretary of Defense he's announced an the production of the F-22 fight no more F-22 Fighters he's eliminating certain Army uh armored vehicles he's overturned plans to build missile defenses in Eastern Europe we have President Obama a Gates is a republican Obama's a Democrat let's just say five years from now into the next Administration maybe it's Barack Obama for a second time maybe not if I got the two of you back here would you say that the Pentagon had done a good job of incorporating Jon's ideas or or are you concerned instead that it there's too much old-fashioned thinking too much of a political overhang and we'll still be behind the curve Victor it's it's going to be dependent not on the argument of counterinsurgency Iraq or Afghanistan John's group and his thinkers are going to have to persuade the traditional bureaucracy that this networking approach in conventional ter if I could use that term will work better against North Korea uh China because uh I think everybody understands we don't want to fight the last war last question can you do what Victor said you need to do are you going to be able to persuade the Pentagon I think we already have with an officer Corp in the middle ranks right now they they all the what we call the 03s and 04s the captains and the majors all sort of understand this and they're very good networkers one of the best things I did in Iraq was create something called companyc command.com where all the captains talk to each other this works that doesn't work and best practices were moving overnight and 5 years from now well they won't be generals yet but if you are willing to go out 10 years that Generation all gets it so we'll be doing a lot more of this but Victor's absolutely right the challenge is can this approach work in a big war and I think it can all right as so often in American military history must we must place our faith in the captains a little in the colonels not so much in the generals John arquilla Victor Davis Hansen thank you very much thank you Peter I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge on the Hoover institution thanks for joining us
