Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. She writes for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Opinion one of our most effective and popular essays out there.
Speaker 1: Just does it every single day is a not an
Speaker 1: acquaintance with Carlisle with a Rockefeller Foundation, but mostly what
Speaker 1: he does is sit at home and write books. Yep,
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand copies have been sold so far. His
Speaker 1: Leader's Bookshelf, which I'll feature on Twitter and LinkedIn here,
Speaker 1: is the must read for your board college brat at
Speaker 1: home this summer. But joining us to celebrate the third
Speaker 1: edition here twenty eighty four is James travenas Admiral. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Good to be bored, Tom, you got.
Speaker 1: Three books out, You're like You, John mccaay or Neville
Speaker 1: Shoot You, and Elliot Ackerman two and thirty four is
Speaker 1: truly one of the most frightening books I've ever read,
Speaker 1: where China and the US go to war, and then
Speaker 1: there's two thousand and fifty four, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighty four it's a whole new world after all?
Speaker 1: Is that where we're heading? Given our military politics of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: We ought to be very worried that we are and
Speaker 2: that's exactly the point of all three books, Tom is
Speaker 2: to go to the public and say, look, there are
Speaker 2: big challenges ahead of us great power war with China.
Speaker 2: Twenty fifty four is about artificial intelligence. Twenty eighty four
Speaker 2: is about conflict towards the end of the century. Look,
Speaker 2: we still have time to reverse engineer this and avoid it.
Speaker 2: But the idea is to launch a cautionary tale in
Speaker 2: these three books as we.
Speaker 1: Launch this weekend. Like you pick up your cell phone, Ed,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it's like for you with your contexts.
Speaker 1: The USS Tripoli is in harms way. How is our
Speaker 1: navy doing.
Speaker 2: I think we're doing except only well. And here I
Speaker 2: mean not only the amphibious ships with the Marines, but
Speaker 2: more importantly in this conflict, the aircraft carriers, each one
Speaker 2: of them eighty combat aircraft. We don't need anybody's permission
Speaker 2: to operate them. We're knocking down the enemy targets. That's
Speaker 2: the good news. The bad news is we have not
Speaker 2: made a great deal of strategic progress yet. But certainly
Speaker 2: our navy is doing its job and doing it well.
Speaker 3: Admirle, you know a thing or two about securing the
Speaker 3: safe passage of the high seas. Will the straight up
Speaker 3: removes ever be open like it was three months ago?
Speaker 2: I think it will be because it must be. And
Speaker 2: that sounds like a tautology, but it's true. We cannot
Speaker 2: we the world, we the global economy, we the United
Speaker 2: States and our allies. We can't simply turn this thing
Speaker 2: over to the Iranians and have them charge as an
Speaker 2: I toll. No way. We have to fight to open it.
Speaker 2: If we do, and if we can accomplish it diplomatically
Speaker 2: putting economic pressure, fine, but yes, that straight will be open.
Speaker 2: Final thought. I've sailed that straight close to one hundred
Speaker 2: times in command and as a junior officer. It's tough
Speaker 2: navigation when you're before you get into drones attacking you
Speaker 2: in see minds. So there's going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of work to do to get it open, but it
Speaker 2: has to be open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Admiral, I mean, I think I speak for most
Speaker 3: just lay people. We didn't realize how narrow that straight is.
Speaker 3: And you see some of the footage. I don't know
Speaker 3: how you people put those big ships through there, but
Speaker 3: and much less the big oil tankers. But it seems
Speaker 3: like anybody with a Boston weller or an RPG can
Speaker 3: shut down that.
Speaker 2: Straight indeed, and so it requires real effort militarily to
Speaker 2: maintain it as an open sea way. And I think
Speaker 2: we're going to have to push our European colleagues to
Speaker 2: come throw in with us. We're not asking them to
Speaker 2: drop bombs or kyron, but they can participate with us
Speaker 2: in reopening and keeping the Straight open.
Speaker 1: A most vitus with us. Course. His work at CNN
Speaker 1: is noted writing for Bloomberg Opinion twenty eighty four, as
Speaker 1: the book were celebrating, I'm going to give you a
Speaker 1: pro tip. Folks, read two thousand and thirty four, Read
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifty four, then read twenty and eighty four.
Speaker 1: It reads like JOHNA. Corray. So there's a memo here
Speaker 1: on page one away to Admiral from the Republic of Greenland.
Speaker 1: Juliet had alerted her colleagues at the UN the Chinese
Speaker 1: fleet was descending the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the fear that's out there, and the cacophony of
Speaker 1: the Trump Pentagon is your What is your contact at
Speaker 1: the Pentagon say about a military that can run business
Speaker 1: as usual?
Speaker 2: Highly difficult, very very challenging. But oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: in the book twenty eighty four, the Free Republic of
Speaker 2: Florida broken away from the United States, is involved, and
Speaker 2: you'll be pieced.
Speaker 1: That's with President J. Griffin, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And don't forget there's Camp Is Santis where the
Speaker 2: forces are operating from in twenty eighty four, but in
Speaker 2: the Pentagon today, I'll take you back where we started.
Speaker 2: The conversation. Is our navy ready to fight? Are they
Speaker 2: fighting our air force or marines?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: The question is can we get diplomacy and economics affixed
Speaker 2: to those military capabilities. If we can, we can solve this.
Speaker 3: Ad multit extent. We want to solve this. How do
Speaker 3: you what form do you think that takes here? Because
Speaker 3: I'm not sure some of the major objectives have been achieved.
Speaker 3: I either the regime is still there or the ranium
Speaker 3: still there. There's if you don't have rockets today, you
Speaker 3: can make them in a year or so. I don't
Speaker 3: know where do we go.
Speaker 2: Two point piece plan number one open the stray eight
Speaker 2: Number two provide some level of economic relief to Iran.
Speaker 2: That's something for both sides. Put the nuclear discussion in
Speaker 2: a sidecar to be negotiated in the future. And then
Speaker 2: here's the key point. Over time two to three years,
Speaker 2: we help build a resistance inside Iran like we've built
Speaker 2: the French resistance in World War Two. That's how the
Speaker 2: regime falls, not because of bombing. What is it?
Speaker 1: And I go back edmyl to your service in Brussels
Speaker 1: at NATO. What is the thing about Iran we most
Speaker 1: get wrong? Vali Nasser has that wonderful one volume out
Speaker 1: on the history of Iran through nineteen seventy nine and
Speaker 1: all the war, the horrific Iraq Iranian War. What's the
Speaker 1: thing we get most wrong about our study of Iran, Admiral.
Speaker 2: We don't understand how they see themselves, and we think
Speaker 2: of them as this kind of annoying, mid sized power
Speaker 2: in the Middle East. That's not how they see themselves,
Speaker 2: tom They see themselves as the inheritors of the Persian
Speaker 2: Empire from two thousand, five hundred years ago. They truly
Speaker 2: believe in that kind of destiny. And I say this
Speaker 2: as a proud Greek American. It was only the Greeks
Speaker 2: who finally stopped them at the edge of Europe two
Speaker 2: thousand years ago. That's the mental map they hold and
Speaker 2: until we understand that, we are going to have a
Speaker 2: great deal of difficulty dealing with them.
Speaker 1: In your study of Greece within the Leader's bookshelf is
Speaker 1: absolutely extraordinary. But one final question, if I can this
Speaker 1: Navy needs to heal after President Trump in some way.
Speaker 1: How does that happen the day after whatever the next
Speaker 1: inauguration is? How does a Navy? How does a Pentagon
Speaker 1: move on after President Trump?
Speaker 2: Here's the good news. Our military over centuries early has
Speaker 2: had dissonance with its political leadership. But the qualities of
Speaker 2: our armed forces, honor, courage, commitment, they transcend the day
Speaker 2: to day politics. I'm very confident that our Navy and
Speaker 2: our other services will hue to their professionalism and move
Speaker 2: on to the next administration.
Speaker 1: This reshort wonderful, incredibly difficult fictions by Ackerman and Stravenas
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirty four, fifty four and just out
Speaker 1: this week two thousand and eighty four as well. I
Speaker 1: can't say enough about the Shock. It was my book
Speaker 1: of the summer a number of summers ago, two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirty four and Ackerman Instruvitis Do It Again, two
Speaker 1: thousand and eighty four. Whatever your politics, just read it.
Speaker 1: What did you say in the Republic of Florida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: That makes sense too, I guess. So we'll have to
Speaker 1: see James Travenas. Thank you so much, abrastravitis er.