 and welcome to World of Books, a talk show on books that we think you should read. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and today's book is Battlegrounds, the fight to defend the free world by HR McMaster. He is the former National Security Advisor for President Donald Trump. And to discuss this book, I've invited to join us today retired Major General, John Scott Harrell. General Harrell is the former Commander of California Army National Guard and the 40th Infantry Division. In 2005, General Harrell has commended a multinational peacekeeping brigade in Kosovo. He is the author of two books and several informational articles on the current war in Ukraine. General Harrell, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I enjoy being back on the program. Well, and we hope to have you again, I'm sure. We're getting you to commit right now. That's fine. Excellent. Well, this was, in my opinion, this was one of the most comprehensive, elaborate books on current US foreign policy. And that is because over six chapters, the author presents the challenges we have in our relationship with a certain country or entity. And the order is Russia, China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Iran, and North Korea. So I want to start this discussion with you by asking you, do you think there's a relevance to this order? Was it the book was written in 2020? So I wonder how did the author decide who should go first in this book? Is it the severity of the issue? Is it proximity? Is it timing? Economic impact? What do you think? Well, I think normally I agree with General McMaster's that China is the more of a global threat in competition-wise. But I think he went with Russia first because of the situation that happened in 2016 during the elections, the Russian interference with the midterm elections, and the basic Russian cyber, for all intents and purposes, warfare and misdirection that has been taking place for quite some time. So my guess is even in your army would say it's the 25 meter target. It's the one that's closest to you. China still has, as a competitor, is a major threat, but they're still out the 100 or 200-yard line. They're not right there in our face at this time. And I think that's why he put Russia before China. You know, we're watching the news here in Hawaii and we hear that North Korea has launched six missiles in the past two weeks. And we feel pretty close geographically to North Korea. So where do you see that threat today? Should it still be the sixth one on the list, or should we move it up? No, I should say the sixth. Basically, China and North Korea assume, because we're decisively supporting Ukraine in their fight for liberty and freedom, that we would be distracted and couldn't focus on threats in that region. It's just the opposite. The Pacific Fleet of the United States is responsible for the Far East, or they call it South Asia now. And that fleet is sitting there and it's not anywhere near Ukraine or going near Ukraine. So when you have competitors, like in any field, whether it's economics or sports or whatever, and the competitors see that you're kind of distracted by something off the sideline, they're going to act up. And so that's what you're seeing with China and with North Korea. They're acting up. Is it a real threat? The real threat is that if that rocket didn't work, it would land it on Japan. And that's the real threat. Their rocket tree is not up the par compared to Western or even Russian or Chinese technology. So that's always a danger. It would screw up and then their intent would make it a much bigger crisis than they intended. So in today's or with today's circumstances, you would probably maintain the same order of urgency when it comes to dealing with these conflicts. Russia, China, or would you put China first before Russia? No. China, as described in the book, is a long-term issue. And going back to his thesis, which is basically strategic narcissism versus strategic empathy, the fact that we have a tendency to look only from our interests, and we want to impose that on everybody else. And we don't look at the background of the other country. So in China's case, China has a long history. You need to know it if you're going to work with China, just like he mentioned in the book. And they have long-term goals. Unlike the United States, which has four and eight-year goals, China has 50-year goals and 100-year goals. So they're not in a hurry to push us to the brink of us exchanging rockets or gunfire, but they're going to take every advantage that they can. And again, they're a target that's further down the line longer-term than Russia is now. Russia is facing disaster on the battlefield. Their economy is the size of Italy. The sanctions are working. But they're right in front of us. They're the 25-meter target. So we've got to address that problem while simultaneously addressing the competition with China. Thank you for bringing up the concept of strategic narcissism, because it had been offered repeatedly often in the book. And the way I understand it is essentially it is not knowing your enemy well enough and expecting the enemy to react like you would or like you want them to. So how can we fix this? How can we transition from this strategic narcissism to strategic empathy? Is education a component to these efforts? Yes. And I just was just having a discussion with my wife, who is a political science major. And I asked her strictly, did she study clause with her son, Sue, as a political science major? And at the time, she said, no, she did not. She did not study it until she got into the military education system like I had. The military education system studies Sun Sue, studies clause with and why Sun Sue is important. One of the principles of Sun Sue is know yourself and know your opponent. If you know yourself and don't know your opponent, you will win battles but not have a conclusive war or a conclusive competition. The only way to win is to know yourself and know your opponent. Generally, Americans are not really good at understanding, which McMaster says is empathy, understanding the opponent, understanding the history of the region. So we come up with a solution that looks like it's we're going to make a little America. We can't make a little America. We need to make a little Iraqistan or whatever. We need to assist them to develop their own institutions their way. May not look like ours, but if they develop it, we won't have the problems that we had in Afghanistan or Iraq and the other other adventures we had over the last 20 years. Do you think we need more linguists or people that could speak more than English? Yes. One of the there's a couple issues when I work with my international partners on the military side is Americans normally speak one language and we don't even speak the English. We speak the American version of it. All of our friends speak English, the English version of it. So even though we may have a communication with the French officer who's speaking English, there's still miscommunications because we're speaking different dialects. But one of the things that we're the weakest at is we only speak one language and we need to be able to in the schools emphasize bilingual education, whether it's Spanish for the Southwest, French or German like we took when I was in high school. That's a critical part to train our future political scientists and State Department personnel. I couldn't agree more. I grew up in Romania and Romania is not a very rich country yet. We start learning the foreign language in kindergarten and then a second language in middle school. Of course, not everybody is proficient in those languages, but still the options are there. So that's what's important. As long as you're going to order beer in three languages, you're okay. Yeah. And you need to say left, right and help. That's what you need to know as well. So going back to the book, the subtitle of the book is the fight to defend the free world. And one big question. Why is it that the United States have to do this job? Why do we have to defend the free world? Well, basically our economic system requires raw goods and materials and markets around the world. This has always been America's policy since the beginning is a free market economy. The theory behind the free market economy is if the world standard of living raises, you'll have fewer reasons to have conflict. And as long as you have free trade between countries, that will make the American experience better. Unfortunately, we view it from only our aspect. So when we're working in the Far East with China, we have to make sure we understand what China's real goals are. We always put kind of links to humanitarian and the Chinese have no intentions of honoring those, but they're going to keep the deal going. So if we, I'll give you another example in California and Hawaii, our oil comes from foreign sources because there's no pipelines from the Midwest to California. So just for California and Hawaii to get fuel, petroleum products, we have to import fuel and petroleum products. As an example, on February 24th, 2022, when this war kicked off hot, 30% of the oil in the refineries in Los Angeles, which supply Hawaii, came from Russia. So if we're just looking at just us, we're going to have a very difficult time keeping our place in the world economy and our standard of living, if we try to shut ourselves off. And one of the misconception is under the last administration where he was saying America first, he didn't mean cutting us out of the world market. He basically meant is we need to start looking at American priorities when we're interacting with our foreign competitors and markets. So you have written a book on the use of cavalry in the second world war. And I hope that our tech can show the cover of the book. Thank you, Eric. Now, I'm not an expert, but I'm making the assumption that in today's wars, we don't use cavalry as much. We may use different, sometimes we don't even use military necessary, like in, let's say, the war with China. It's mostly economical, right? Well, basically, I wouldn't say we're at war with China per se. We are competitors. And it's a very, very strong fight, competitor-wise, like boxes in a ring, but we're competitors. I wouldn't say we're at war with them per se. That doesn't mean that we are not having problems with cyber attacks into our industry to get the secrets out of the industry, and that sort of thing. That's just part of the 21st century world market doing business. One company stealing secrets from another is just part of the normal operation. The Chinese trying to get into our systems, we walking them and probably trying to get into their systems. That's just part of the new reality for the 21st century when it comes to technology and communications. When you look at the Soviet cavalry, the tools change, but the theory doesn't. So the theory behind Soviet horse cavalry was get behind the enemy front line, cut up their supply lines, blow up their rail bridges, which is exactly what Ukraine is doing right now with tanks and armored personnel carriers and drones and high-mars and all these other technical, high-technical 21st century systems. They're replicating the theory that the Soviet cavalry executed in World War II with modern technology and modern equipment. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Thank you. You kind of went into what I wanted to ask you about. They're probably principles that get carried on no matter what kind of weapon you use. Correct. And the key is we have to go back to Clausewitz. War is foreign policy by other means. You flip that around and it means the same. Foreign policy is war by other means. I would change war to competition. So China and America are competitors on the world market. No events or buts. It doesn't have to go to the hot part and reverse it back to a war issue. The simple technical interactions that we are doing as competitors may at some times look like a war is going on, but it's actually the 21st century method of competition. So the author also states several times that the United States has tried to find short-term solutions to long-term problems. And how many of these existing conflicts you think would be solved in the near future? Where do you see the world in 20, 30 years from now? Well, there's an old saying, I tried to look at who said it, is that Americans in foreign policy think like Boy Scouts and act like Cowboys. Basically, we look for simple short-term solutions and then we go in with the Cowboys and try and implement. The rest of the world thinks in a much longer term way of cause and effect, second and third order of effect. If I do X, X1 and X2 are probably going to happen or not happen. So basically, it's a training of our, our military is trained in that method. Through the military schools we go through, that's exactly what we look at. But we're the military arm and it's the State Department's job to do all that political part of it. We can do it in a pinch like we did initially in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's really the State Department's job to do that forward-looking thinking, develop a steady policy that will go through administrations. Because right now we have a tendency to look at four-year blocks and eight-year blocks. Well, if we're now talking in the, the 2050s and the 2030s, we need State Department and other branches of government that are responsible for the, our international activities to look in those terms too. Now the good news is, they exist. Think tanks. The Army War College, the Navy War College, that, that takes place at those locations. The problem is educating the political side of the elected officials. They don't go through that education system. And all you can do as a military person or a professional State Department person is advise them and try and guide them to the long-term solution. But sometimes they'll go in a tweet and decide to go exactly the opposite direction. You know, the author seems pretty fair in assessing these accomplishments, but also the failures of previous administrations. He, there's good things and there's bad things and good points both. I wouldn't say he's biased in any way. But it made me think about the role of the president and the weight of his job. He does have the support of these professionals and experts that he mentioned. And just reading this book, an individual would have to become an expert in six areas of the globe to understand all the intricacies. And it's a lot. So what would be, in a perfect world, what would be the perfect president? Well, somebody that has served in the State Department, somebody that's also served in the military, and somebody that's been elected to Congress or the Senate or even at a lower level at a state level. Somebody that combines, basically, we're looking for a Roman senator from 100, 200 years before Caesar's time, where the senator was a general. He was a politician and he was involved in the economic interests of the Roman Republic. That's the kind of president we're looking for. Somebody that is involved in all three of those mega areas. If you're good in only one of them, you're not going to be a good president. And the advantage of the, you know, presidents that have served long terms in the Senate is they've had long experience working with these regions. And they've been educated over time by being in the Senate, being all these various committees to make the appropriate decisions when they get up to the White House. Do they make mistakes? Of course they make mistakes. Do they do things that you and I wouldn't agree with? Of course they do. But if they have that kind of a training for 20 or 30 years before they come president, they'll be able to address these issues in a more professional manner than has been done, you know, relatively recently. And not just this last administration, I'm talking about going back to Old Man Bush in the 90s, whereas he's kind of like the last one that had everything rolled up in one packet and he became president. Thank you for pointing this out. You know, obviously we all keep an eye on the midterm elections and we're trying to figure out or learn who's the next candidate for the job being the president of the United States. So thank you for pointing out what the criteria should be. I think we should all keep that in mind when we go vote. We're approaching the end of the show and I want to move on towards the ending of the book where the author brings out or points out new possible conflicts or type of conflicts entering the arena. And he mentions two conflicts in outer space and the cyberspace. Do you want to add anything? Basically, he's basically throwing up the red flag to everyone is that you got to get out of looking at your iPad or your phone and start understanding how all that works. Because that conflict already started. It started in the 1990s and it's ramping up faster and faster. You know, as often as you have to change your phone or your computer, that's giving you an idea of what the cyber and cyber environment which ties in space. But we'll just look at Ian Musks giving his SpaceX to the Ukrainians, basically save the Ukrainian army by allowing them to communicate once all their communications was down. So that type of technology is going to be critical in the future. Understanding who's making it and where it's coming from becomes extremely important for policymakers. Right now China, and Master's pointed out, did a Trojan horse on us in the communications ramp, which is the telecommunications and the chips and all these things. And they've gotten a large control of the market. So they beat us to the punch. They're one step ahead of us. We've got to recover that disadvantage through these various electronic competition methods. And that's going to be our biggest competition. The second one in the real world is fresh water. As the climate is changing to climate change, water is going to become a much more critical issue. And when you look at the little tiny fights that don't even come up on CNN between little countries, it's along the fresh watermark where somebody has a lot of it and where somebody needs it, especially Africa, some places in South America, things like that. So water is going to become a major issue on the ground as we're looking at the cyber and the space issue the same time. Yeah. And I guess this would fall under the bigger umbrella of climate change and sea level rising. Right. Well, climate change is going to make a major impact on the world situation and the world economy and the world political system. As the sea level rises, the areas dry out, food can't be produced where it used to be. Those are all going to be major flashpoints for us in the next 20 years. Well, Gerald, Harold, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you very much for your insight. And I do hope that you'll be back. Well, thank you. Again, thank you for the invitation. I enjoyed it. And to our viewers, we need to stay informed and we need to stay engaged. And the way to do that is to read good books and watch Think Tech Hawaii shows. Are we rolling? Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. 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