Losing the Battle, Winning the War: Episode 22

In this episode of Alternate Shots, hosts John Ellis and Richard Haass dissect a familiar American illusion: that battlefield dominance equals strategic victory. Yes, Iran has taken a beating; but, as Haass notes, capability plus will still makes for a dangerous adversary. The conversation skewers the president’s speech which failed to articulate a strategy for what comes next. Meanwhile, Gulf allies fret, NATO frays into a polite fiction, and China quietly enjoys the distraction. The verdict: the U.S. may be winning the war it is fighting, but risks losing the one that matters. A classic case of measuring what’s measurable and missing what’s decisive. Plus a few thoughts on Cuba, Tiger Woods, and the Masters.

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Alternate Shots. I'm John Ellis. I'm the founder and editor of two Substack newsletters. One is called News Items, the other is called Political News Items. You can find them both at news-items. I'm Richard Haas.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I am the alternate of alternate shots, and I am the author of a newsletter which was meant to come out once a week, but now seems to be coming out two or three times a week to keep up with the news called Home and Away.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

So the President spoke last night, uh 20 minutes, unusually short for him, and one of the quotes that I pulled goes like this We've beaten and completely decimated Iran. They are decimated both militarily and economically and in every other way. Thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

John, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the word decimated mean that you only destroy 10% of something, as opposed to obliterated, which means you kind of got all of it? I just want to be pedantic for a moment and point that out. Okay. But my guess is we have whatever we did, yeah, we've destroyed a large chunk of Iran's. Its Air Force is essentially nonexistent. We can fly over Iran with impunity. Their Navy, most of it, such as it was, is at the bottom of the some sea or the Gulf. I don't know how many ballistic missiles they may still have, but let's assume even if only 10% of their ballistic missiles are intact that's that haven't been destroyed or shot off gives them a few hundred. The drones, no way of knowing how much they have, plus they can easily regenerate. As Ukraine has demonstrated, every basement is a potential drone factory, all of which is to say that everything the president said in terms of what we've destroyed and the United States and Israel destroyed can be true. But also true is that Iran remains a militarily relevant and capable adversary. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

A second quote from uh his speech goes like this if there is no deal, we're going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Aaron Ross Powell Well, again, if we were ever to do that, my sense is the Iranians would see that as a situation in which they would be, what's the word, unleashed. They would no longer be deterred in any way, and I think they would have what I would call the Samson complex. That if they are to be threatened with existential treatment, in this case to destroy their energy reserves, which is the bulk of their economy, they would say we're going to take everybody else down with us, and we're going to bring down the temple. And they have shown their ability and willingness to do it, and they're saying their attacks on Ghadr, or Qatar, if you prefer, after the Israelis hit the Iranian gas field, the South Bars field. So I would think the Iranians are probably keeping in reserve whatever number of drones or missiles they they estimate they need to hit desalinization plants around the region and to hit energy infrastructure, the wells, pipelines, storage facilities, you name it, essentially a scorched earth policy. And that seems to be missing from the American calculation. Again, we're not fighting a conventional war here. Well, but maybe the odd problem is we are fighting a conventional war against a country with an unconventional strategy. And it just doesn't make so we can win the war we're fighting by normal metrics. Again, what constantly comes to mind, John, you and I are both old now, is the body count. It's McNamara's Pentagon. We're using these quantitative measures of how much we're uh successfully attacking, but we're not taking into account what survives and the mentality of the adversary uh with whom we are engaged.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

I wanted to ask what you thought about the well, I'm not quite sure what it called, the status of uh the Saudi Arabian government or monarchy and the others in the region, which seem to me to be gee, you really shouldn't do this to now that you've done it, finish the job. Is that is that true? Is that the view of the uh the Gulf states that now that Trump has sort of broken it, uh he has to own it? Or am I missing something here?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Aaron Ross Powell Well, that's what they're saying publicly. The problem is several fold. One is they have not defined what is quote unquote finish the job means. And I recently wrote about it. It's a job that can't be finished. Again, we can take out a stunningly high percentage of Iranian capability, but enough capability married to enough will, will survive, that they can continue to inflict enormous harm and damage on the uh neighbors. No, look, the neighbors are worried. Take a step back. This was not a war they wanted for the most part. They've now got it. It hasn't played out in ways, needless to say, that they wanted to see, and now they're worried that their entire futures have been put in doubt. The entire business model, John, of places like Dubai and these other countries has been imperiled. Because that all if you want to have data centers and uh energy infrastructure, it all requires peace. And suddenly, you know, they're worried about living with an angry, capable Iran. So when they when they say now to finish the job, they hate the idea that we could basically say we're out of here, and they are left to contend with an Iran that has capabilities and is feeling that essentially it beat the great Satan and that they're gonna pay this open-ended permanent price for it. So they don't they don't have answers, but they are hoping that somehow, I would put it, that we can solve a problem that is not, shall we say, readily solved. I think that's where they uh are. But no one's really thought it through in terms of uh what it would take to make them comfortable. So my guess is that they're looking for a level of clarity or s what's the word, security that is unlikely to uh be coming their way. Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I mean, it in terms of a business model, you have to have confidence that five years from now, your huge investment in whatever it is, call it data centers or tourism or anything is still viable. And that is that's as you point out, that's sort of thrown to the winds here. So one thing that didn't come up in the speech was BB Netanyahu, which surprised me because as you pointed out, it takes three to tango. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that two or three weeks from now Trump declares mission accomplished. Where does that leave the Israelis? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Well, a lot depends upon what the terms are, whether if it's mission accomplished and we don't have, say, a nuclear agreement, then I think the Israelis could reasonably say to the American president, hey, we've got to be free to attack if we notice Iran doing some activity in the nuclear domain that constitutes a threat to us. And by the way, you Americans should join in the attack. So I think there's a big difference between a Middle East that has a nuclear deal and a Middle East that doesn't. But if the United States essentially wants Israel to desist, to accept a ceasefire, particularly if the issue is ballistic missiles, the is the I don't think we see that as an existential threat, then I think the United States just insists that Israel stop. I don't see where Bibi Netanyahu can afford a public fight with Donald Trump in the run-up to the Israeli election. Plus, I'm beginning to get wind of this from some people in Israel, John. The Israelis now have been on a war footing for two and a half years. And this is taking its toll. And I think that there will be growing voices in Israel who will say, yes, it's one thing to use military force when we face an existential danger and so forth, but reducing another 5% of uh ballistic missiles probably doesn't quite qualify. We need a bit of a break. What Israel's doing now against Hezbollah, it's not clear to me it it qualifies. But uh to to turn Israel, if you will, into Sparta, into a country at perpetual war, that I worry about. And I I worry about what it what it means for the society, whether a lot of the best and brightest are ultimately going to leave. And you have a big chunk, as you know, of Israeli society that doesn't join the military because they're religious or they're Israeli Arabs. So I think perpetual war is not necessarily a great strategic posture for for for Israel. But in any case, if the United States decides that it needs a total ceasefire, I believe we're in a position to insist on it when it comes to Israel. But I think a lot of this will depend upon how much is formalized as regards the Strait of Hormuz or the nuclear situation, and how much is left uh informal.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

One thing that struck me in this whole conversation about the war and Iran's uh posture, I guess, it's it's a view that it's winning, is that they have two cards that they haven't really played yet. One is cyber warfare, and the other is you might call sleeper cells. And uh it would seem to me they would do that in Europe because that wouldn't further destabilize NATO, which we'll get to in a moment. But is it is that surprising to you? I mean, it seems like the Iranians have a very capable cyber corps, core team. We are the U.S. uh is disadvantaged at the moment because of cutbacks and so on and so forth. And the sleeper cells has always seemed to me to be there to be activated, uh particularly in Europe.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Aaron Ross Powell On the former I am surprised because Iran has has shut down a lot of its internet, so we are presumably a lot more vulnerable than they would be to opening up that theater or venue, if so, so to speak, of war. Sleeper cells and terrorism would be a bit of a risk because that could also galvanize uh a sense that this is morphed from what you might call a war of choice to a war of necessity. And so I think that's uh would be potentially a dangerous form of escalation. It's the better Iranian tool has been to do the things they've done. They're doing in a in a funny sort of way just fine from their point of view, the way they are, closing off the strait to those that don't want to be able to use it and threatening or attacking the energy and infrastructure of their neighbors. So it's not clear to me why the terrorism dimension at this point would necessarily work in their favor.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Trevor Burrus, Jr. So the president gave an interview to the telegraph, which used to be called a newspaper, saying that he was ready to pull the U.S. out of NATO, which he's legally not capable of doing, but nevertheless the threat is there, and there's certainly uh he's giving the NATO allies every impression that at a minimum uh doesn't care for them very much, and at the most would prefer not to be involved. What does that mean? I mean, what are the implications of that, or what are the knock-on effects of the president's interview with the telegraph? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I may be in a minority here, John, but I don't think it changes all that much. This president entered office with a deep, fundamental, abiding mistrust of allies. He sees them free either freeloaders or uh economic competitors. He doesn't like alliances because they lock you in. That by definition you're committed to doing certain things. I remember when I spoke to him in 2016 when he was running for president, what came through was his just deep dislike of the Allies. So none of this surprises me. I think also, given Ukraine, given tariffs, any number of things, these allies have basically pretty much internalized the notion that they're on their own. The alliance remains, but it's a little bit, it's a shell. And does anyone seriously believe if Vladimir Putin moved against one of the countries, the small countries in Central Europe, that the United States would make good on its Article V commitments? I have profound doubts. Uh I think what's holding Putin back is his the weakness of his own military and Ukraine's his priority. But if he ever got to the point where Ukraine was, uh he could he checked it off his to-do list, then I think the rest of Europe, parts of Europe could be could be quite in danger. And again, I think the Europeans, that's what they're so worried about. They feel they're already at war with Russia and they can no longer count on the United States. So Donald Trump doesn't have to quote unquote leave NATO. And he couldn't, as you correctly point out. Congress got us in, if you will. Only Congress can take us out. But he can withdraw troops and he can continue to cast doubt about the automaticity of our commitments. So I actually think we're living for the foreseeable future in a the reality of a post-NATO situation. And the danger is the Europeans aren't yet at a point where they can be, what, self-reliant. They just haven't, they have they don't have the capability. I think they're finally waking up that they gotta develop it, but you can't flick a switch. This is gonna take years, but we're not giving them years potentially. So uh I worry about this. But but what he what he said in the to the telegraph seemed to me to kind of to underscore a little bit what we already what we already knew. He's just now making it explicit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

One of the most interesting stories I read this week was the AFD in Germany uh had called for the U.S. troops in Germany to leave, which, you know, in the political realm, MAGA and AFD are aligned, actively so. Now you have uh the AFD saying U.S. troops out of Germany, you know, that meshes rather rather perfectly with Trump's view that he wants out of uh wants the U.S. out of NATO. If you look at the right wing in Europe generally, they share the AFD's uh sentiments. So political pressure from Europe is U.S. get out. Political pressure from Trump is U.S. get out. It doesn't mean that the U.S. will get out, but it's uh as you point out, it's a shell of what it once was. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

No, it it's a shell, and we may, given the rise of the right potentially in France, and we see elements of Germany reform in Britain. The domestic basis of NATO in these countries as well as in the United States now is is, to put it gently, suspect. And so no, we it may have taken seven or eight decades, but we're we're finally entering the post-post-World War II era. This is one of those historical transition points. So it's a fasten your seatbelt kind of timing. Whenever whenever you have transitions, uh to what to get you know to use another image of uh tectonic plates moving, that kind of friction is dangerous. And this is this is one of those moments in history where history could again, rather than end, could could could start up. And it's if you if you're not worried, you're not paying attention. I don't you know I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I think what we've learned in the last few years, it's harder to rule certain things out than it used to be.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Trevor Burrus The U.S. is winning the conventional war. Iran is winning the unconventional war. What is the middle ground? What how does that how does that reach an agreement where I I assume that it would all be preceded by a ceasefire as someone who's negotiated complicated deals in your past? Uh you don't do these things in two or three weeks, so a ceasefire seems like part A, but what goes what makes what makes people come to accept the ceasefire, I guess? Is there is there middle ground for the ceasefire or no?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Well, one question is whether you can get a separate ceasefire. As you recall, it proved impossible in Ukraine. Countries often are reluctant to agree to see a ceasefire if they feel they lose leverage. Or, you know, we may have some issues with a ceasefire because it would inevitably be conditional if we suddenly noticed the Iranians were doing something to get at nuclear materials. Or Iran may have problems with the ceasefire if they felt, again, it was working to their disadvantage. So I think you know, ultimately it's gonna have to be wrapped up. There's two big issues. It's just the nuke the state of the nuclear program in Iran, materials and capabilities, and secondly, the strait. And and the ceasefire is obviously related to uh arranging outcomes on both of those. It's easier for me or to see an informal set of uh arrangements on the nuclear, which are not nearly as good as formal arrangements. But again, as I mentioned before, that you could have red lines and the Israelis and the Americans could attack if those red lines were crossed. Much better to have uh an agreement which puts a ceiling on Iranian capabilities, sets up inspections, reduce, eases sanctions, and so forth. That would be, I think, a decent outcome. If it sounds like a version of what we had before, it would be. The details would change and hopefully be better. With the strait, lots of ideas. I don't see how seizing islands helps. I think the idea of escorting tankers is nutty. I've proposed a blockade through the Gulf of Oman. I've proposed setting up a kind of Strait of Hormuz User Authority where Iran and the neighboring countries would govern it, maybe set up a tolling mechanism. Maybe the countries like China that want to see the strait open, because they're you know they're major importers of Iranian uh fuel, they might support something like this. So I can imagine, but I think you're looking at a ceasefire in the context of the nuclear issue and in the context of the strait issue. As you mentioned, for the Israelis, the strait isn't the issue. Even the nuclear is an issue, but the things like proxies and uh Iranian support for proxies and Iranian ballistic missiles are big issues. So there's a big divergence potentially between the United States and Israel. But I do think at some point we may have to tell the Israelis that we've uh had enough. All I would say is, John, that last night's speech did very little to resolve any of this. I don't know what you thought going into the speech, but I I thought it was about a 70% chance that the president was going to basically declare victory, mission accomplished, and we get out of Dodge. And I thought there was a minority chance that he would say we're going to send in ground forces to deal with the strait. What he did was neither. And it seemed to me he didn't he didn't put anything out there that impressed Iran, that reassured our allies, that persuaded the American public, or that steadied either energy markets or stock markets. So last night turned out to be almost a holding action. And in my day, when presidents spoke to the country, it usually was decisive. And last night seemed to me to be a he's a oh, it's just a four we're only three weeks away from the NFL draft. I thought it I thought it was a punt. And so the president, he may be reluctant to decide which way to go, but I actually think he's gonna have to circle back to some very big decisions and deal with these unattractive options that he in some ways has generated by this war. But uh I don't think last night changed anything.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

I don't think it changed anything in terms of U.S. public opinion, which is I mean, Trump's approval rating is now at its lowest point imaginable, it seems to me. And I don't think anything that he did last night will boost that much. And that's another I mean, that's the U.S. is fighting this conventional war, the Iranians fighting an unconventional war. One of the one of the things that they have going for them is the lack of enthusiasm for the war and the growing lack of enthusiasm for President Trump. It's not it's not a situation that that uh speech did much to change. As you point out, it was a nothing burger, I think you said in Homer.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

That was the technical phrase I used. Yes. It's what you when you grow up and you and you run the Council on Foreign Relations for two decades, it's it's one of the terms of art that you Let me ask you a question about the speech. Do you think there's any chance that the administration, when it set up the speech, was thinking of something more decisive, either about Iran or about NATO, and for whatever set of reasons pulled back that therefore they were stuck giving a speech, but they ended up giving a speech that didn't do any work, or am I overthinking this?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Aaron Powell I think that's always the case in the Trump administration. I mean, I think that there are people that think that, you know, they have framed the debate or whatever the political consulting language is, and that the president will list off, read off these three talking points or whatever, and then it gets to Trump and he's like, oh, maybe not. And so at the last in the last twelve hours it all has to be stitched together, and when it's stitched together, it comes out as inconclusive, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Aaron Powell I thought it was uh to d to command twenty minutes of prime time after a month of war, and to give a speech that did so little work uh to me was a real head scratcher.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Trevor Burrus, yeah. I mean the the when they did the bombing last year, he was able to say, we did the bombing, it was successful, we've obliterated their nuclear capability. So it was a factual presentation, such as such as it was. And uh and this one i it was about what we're going to do, where we are and what we're going to do, and what you took away was we're not quite sure what we're going to do, but we are going to obliterate them or decimate them or whatever. I have one last question for you, which is before we get to the all-important sports section. I want I wanted to ask you if you're Xi Jinping and you're looking at a summit meeting in May with President Trump, what what do you make of all this?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Well, I'd say the setting is pretty good for Xi Jinping in the sense that the United States is bogged down in the Middle East yet again. And we're using up a lot of the stuff that might, in other circumstances, be destined for Taiwan. Plus, we've pulled Marines out of Japan, we've pulled air defense systems out of South Korea. So not bad if you're Xi Jinping. Plus, by the way, the United States is burning a lot of bridges with countries, and China, you see it in various polls, is looking better by comparison. I think the Chinese, though, are still curious to meet with Trump. They want to see what they can offer him in the economic space and what he's prepared to give up in the geopolitical space. I don't think they've made any cosmic decisions about Taiwan or that. But they've got to be interested in also probably Iran's control of the strait. It suggests certain things that maybe Beijing could do to put pressure on Taiwan, which is so dependent on, among other things, imported energy. So I would think if you're China, you're feeling pretty good about the United States having embarked on this distracting, costly war that once again finds us so involved in this other theater, leaving less means, but also potentially less political will. Imagine this doesn't turn out great, John. And imagine domestic issues that you you know you know more about than I do. Whether it's economic or the politics and all this, hard to imagine Americans going to have as much or much enthusiasm for another international standoff far halfway across the world opposite China. So I actually think this is uh all plays to China's advantage.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Aaron Powell My theory on this is that Xi should go for a blockade because the U.S., you know, the public has no interest in a two-front war, and frankly, neither does Trump, really, does he?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

I don't think he's interested in one front war. When he went into this, he didn't realize that's what he was getting into. I mean, it's hard to imagine him choosing to do something that is so at odds both with his own purported national security strategy and with his own fundamental dislike of large military encounters. I mean, if Venezuela is his template of a success, this is about as far away from that. And it really highlights the limits to running a foreign policy, carrying out a foreign policy with people who don't, who aren't experts and where you don't have a serious process. There was nothing in this that was by design. This just all happened because so many of the assumptions were wrong about the nature of Iran and the nature of modern warfare and how Iran would respond to certain types of things. Again, the entire bias of the Trump foreign policy was to do less in the world. And suddenly it finds itself being asked to do a lot. I expect Mr. Trump is having some very unhappy moments, whether it's at the White House or Mar-a-Lago. This is not where he thought he'd be in the second year of his second term.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Well, we have to turn to the upcoming Masters golf tournament. Tiger Woods will not be participating, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

But there are Which is a sad story we haven't talked about. I don't do I don't really want to talk about it either, do you? Not particularly. But it is a it's a sad chapter and in a s somewhat sad story.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah. I don't know. It's it's uh it's just hard to read. I when I I was uh thinking about I should put it in news items and I decided not to just because it made me sad. So I don't want to be sad. But who's gonna win, Masters? Who's gonna win?

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Uh I'm gonna say I think it's time for uh Cam Young to uh win a major. How's that?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

I like it. A sleepy hollow man.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Sleepy hollow man. What's so interesting about this maths is Scotty Scheffler, who you would have if we had had this conversation, we probably did, three or six months ago, we would have said Scotty Scheffler will be the odds-on favorite to win. But Scotty Scotty Scheffler's had a rough stretch of golf. I mean, you and I would give, you know, however many fingers and toes we could to have such a rough stretch. But by his lights, by his standards, this has not been a great couple of weeks or months. This is the start of this season. So he's not the prohibitive or I I don't know whether the odds makers will make him the favorite, but if they do, it'll be based on the last couple of years, not the last couple of months. So I think it's wide open.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

All right. Uh Brooks Kepka is going to win the Masters.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

You heard it here.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

You heard it here first. Uh finally, is to anyone. Well, that that's why we have editing, so we can just erase it. You know what I'm saying? Dale. Dale will handle that for us.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Thank you, Dale.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

When it goes into the archive, it'll it'll miss that.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Uh it's like the old Soviet Union when they used to kind of bloat whatever it was, get certain people out of the photographs by the Kremlin wall. So we'll we'll do the equivalent here. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Finally, we have to ask you are you excited about the NFL draft?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

John, I thought you'd never ask. I'm excited. It's three weeks away. The Giants, as you may have heard, have the fifth choice in the draft, though there's a lot of speculation. Depending upon what happens, choices one through four, they may trade it down in order to get a few extra draft choices because they have so many uh needs. I have read maybe 75 or 100 mock drafts. You wonder what I do in my spare time, John. That is what I do. All these people put out mock drafts as to how the rounds will unf unfold. Nobody has the slightest clue, other than perhaps the first choice, uh, Mr. Mendoza, the quarterback of uh the the champion Indiana team. So I'll confess, I'm gonna tell you a story here. Do we have time for a quick story?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

So I was recently in Las Vegas and I met Mr. October.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Reggie Jackson.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yes. We were we found ourselves at the same dinner table, not gambling table, at the dinner table. Uh-huh. And we talked about baseball as you would expect. But ultimately we got to football because he, we know we're talking about New York stories, and I mentioned the Giants, or he asked me about the Giants, and I said that uh I was confident the New York Giants were gonna make the playoffs this year. Uh a prediction I have made on this show more than once. And he looked at me like I like sort of I thought you were a smart guy, but now I'm gonna reconsider everything I think. I said, no, really, the Giants are gonna make the playoffs this year, and I gave my my reason. He then takes out his wallet, takes out a hundred dollar bill, and he says, Here's a hundred bucks that they won't. At which point I had to take out my wallet, take out a hundred bucks. And so we had two hundred dollars there sitting there, and we gave it to the a woman sitting next to us who uh tucked it away, let me put it that way. And uh that is uh that is my I put my money where my mouth is on the giants. I just want you to know that I am not just uh I know talk is cheap. Hear talk may be uh expensive.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Well, I think Dale can erase that part. Uh that does that about does it for us here at uh alternate shots global headquarters. Our producer is the great Dale Isinger. Richard, thank you. We'll see you next time. Take care of yourself, Mr. Ellis.