General Hertling was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012. He also commanded 1st Armored Division in Germany and Multinational Division-North during the surge in Iraq from 2007 to 2009. He shares his thoughts on what it takes to build a leader, and what we lose when someone such as General Chris Donahue departs active duty.

The Bulwark

What Happens When the Country Loses a General

THE REPORTED EARLY RETIREMENT of Gen. Chris Donahue from command of U.S. Army Europe and Africa is about more than the departure of a single officer. It is the latest example of a broader trend that should concern anyone interested in the long-term health of the Ame…

Read more

10 hours ago · 194 likes · Mark Hertling

This op-ed written by retired Lt. Gen. Charles D. Luckey, was published in “The Pilot,” on June 16, 2026. It tells the story of the failure of democratic norms in ancient and modern times. As context for our contemporary challenges he provides a summary of transgressions from what he calls the “Revenge Agenda Administration,” and notes that, “While we are on the road to hell, its construction is in the open and on our own watch.” We have, Luckey says, the power and responsibility to press back.

A Threat to Democratic Norms And the Battle for Accountability

By Charles Luckey

Originally published in “The Pilot,” on June 16, 2026

It is a crisp, clear morning in Turkey as our bus cruises over a modern highway stretched along the trace of ancient paths as we journey back through time. Troy, Pergamon, Didyma, Miletus, Ephesus — these are places where humans lived and loved and danced and wrote, in some cases, well over 3,000 years ago.

Some are deserted and have crumbled. Some have been renovated, improved, adapted and reconstructed time and again. Some serve beer. All invite reflection.

​Two thousand and twenty six years after the dawn of the “Christian Era” and 250 years after the signing of the American Declaration of Independence is as fitting a time as ever to do this work. After all, when we look for sources of inspiration and wisdom in crafting a pragmatic and informed vision — of a more promising future for not only our grandchildren but for millions of humans we will never meet or know — it is not a bad idea to absorb some truths about “us” as we adventure back across the millennia.

To be sure, some things have changed, but the guts of the matter have not. Humans are still humans.

​Consider the Roman Republic as the norms of collective self-governance dissolved and Julius Caesar was able to ignore the Senate’s directive that he relinquish command of his forces and return to Rome. Breaching the ultimate taboo by crossing the Rubicon River with his Legio XIII Gemina in 49 BCE, he unleashed a domestic civil war and ultimately declared himself “dictator for life” after defeating his political rival Pompeii and consolidating power.

Although Caesar was assassinated on the Senate floor in 44 BCE, that deliberative body had lost both its will and its capacity to curb the lust for power of would-be dictators just as the Republic had abandoned its efficacy as a functional structure for competent self-governance. It would never recover as the slide into tyranny accelerated. The rule of the Emperors had begun.

​The combination of a feckless and obsequious excuse for a deliberative legislative body and the unchecked hubris of enabled power-drunk tyrants would lead to a failed Republic that Caesar’s successors would leverage to feed their egos as they etched their likenesses on monuments, temples, coinage and other indices of power and greatness. In the end, there was no limit. The Senate would deify many, adding them to the pantheon of Roman gods.

That was then. This is now.

​Two thousand and seventy-five years later, it is no stretch to sense a similar threat to our own democratic norms swimming into view. The Big Game is afoot.

In the battle between the forces of oligarchic kleptocracy and those of democratic self-governance, the lines are being sketched as the contours become clear. What makes it hard for some to grasp is not that it is not clear and present, but simply that we do not want to see it. We are not, after all, supposed to see it. Yet, as D.T. Suzuki once put it, “Freedom is seeing things as they are.” So let us do that.

​Even a cursory review of the wave-tips of the last 18 months of a Revenge Agenda Administration is instructive. Informed as it was by the intellectual architects of Project 2025 — but motivated by the greed, cynicism and kleptocratic nihilism of billionaires who could not give a damn about anything but the craving for more — it has been cynically and effectively amplified. That has been done by those who urge us to fear “the other” — anyone who looks or sounds different from “us” — and to regress to the instincts of scarcity that are fundamentally antithetical to the ethos inscribed on the welcoming torch in New York Harbor.

This has always been the tool of the ruthlessly ambitious; to leverage anxiety, insecurity and complicit incuriosity to create the illusion and allure of tribal conflict. It feels like loyalty to a football team — or to a cause or sense of community that entertains and attracts us like “Deadheads” to a traveling concert or festival — but it always ends in bloodshed.

​So far, this latest encounter has brought us American citizens gunned down in the streets by federal agents and the bombing of Iran for no reason that has not been fabricated ex post facto as an unabashed charade to disguise an uninformed impulse for a coherent strategy.

To be clear, there was no pretext of a nuclear threat or an ICBM that could strike the Western Hemisphere in the quiver of the IRGC when Israel encouraged us to bomb Tehran. All of that chatter would come later as the unvarnished fiasco took form and the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz was, predictably, closed.

In any other time in the past 250 years, this self-inflicted ham-handedness would have led to a serious adult national conversation about the competency and accountability of our elected and appointed leaders. But not today.

​Today, we watch our appointed officials spend our dollars on family road trips and private jet-setting frolics with girlfriends on airplanes we own. We bear witness to insider trading, market manipulation and sham negotiations between a Plaintiff President and a Defendant Department of Justice clearly designed to engineer both financial windfall as well as future immunity for the plaintiff, his businesses and his family.

​Our national debt stacks upon itself while the billionaire foxes gorge themselves in the henhouse, hoping to cut their taxes one more time before we wake up. We act as pirates on the high seas and brag about it. We give strategic and enduring advantage to our adversaries as an act of superpower suicide. We “cosplay” governance as if it were reality TV or a cage fight.

​From the DOGE debacle, to the dismissal of medical science, to the smashing of alliances, to the embrace of bullies and dictators, to the blatantly kleptocratic self-dealing that has been orchestrated in broad daylight, to the strafing of shipwreck survivors on the high seas, to the gleeful disregard of due process, free speech, academic integrity and the rule-of-law — the mountain of evidence piles up on the floor of history’s courtroom while the Senate demurs, adjourns and hopes to avoid the embarrassment of not definitively quashing the chief executive’s slush fund for so called “patriots” who sacked the U.S. Capitol, assaulted its police force and smeared their feces on the walls of its Rotunda.

Caesar would know this place. So, too, would Thomas Jefferson, who once warned us that “…the end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when the government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed corporations.”

Is this where we are? Did the Supreme Court’s fatally flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United v. The Federal Elections Commission cast this shadow? Is there still time to stop the slide into incompetent, privatized tyranny?

​If we are paying attention, I think the answer is in the affirmative. While we are on the road to hell, its construction is in the open and on our own watch. It is here that the perch of history can inform our perspective.

Marveling in awe and reverence at the Temple of Artemis at Sardis — a massive project that was under construction for over 800 years and never fully completed — brings the present into a clearer focus. It is a view that is informed by the humility that comes with embracing our own magnificent insignificance.

Spending time with 4,000 years of human beings being human adds context. We won’t be here long, so maybe it is finally time to grow up and get serious. Future generations are counting on us, and history continues to record.

​We are not without either the power or the responsibility to press back against the inhuman and inhumane forces of greed and corruption. This is good news. The simple fact of the matter is that our challenges lie not in resolving our differences so much as they do in appreciating how many of them are fabricated by those who would distract us from finding common ground, or from appreciating how much human commonality we already share.

​The struggle that is now afoot is not between so-called “Conservatives” and so-called “Liberals” any more than it is between a Red Team versus a Blue Team, or between those who live in cities versus those who live on the prairies. In America, the real line is being drawn between those who still hold to the natural law of human liberty versus those who believe that their massive wealth places them above the law and the obligations of citizenship, much less any semblance of accountability to humanity. It is about the timeless struggle between the dignity of the human soul versus the commodification of everything in the self-dealing marketplace of the oligarchs.

​In the end, clear-minded, critical thought is our ally.

Individual agency — holding ourselves to account and responsible for the legacy we leave — is the key to effective and sustainable self-governance. Neither grievance, nor fear, nor slogans, nor entertainment masquerading as “news” will give us the vision we need to see our way clear of the darkness that some would have us embrace.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer offered shortly before his execution at the hands of Adolph Hitler, “…upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.”

​Let us take that gifted theologian’s final reflection to heart. It is time to engage, to think and to double down on love. The future will remember.

Retired Lt. Gen. Charles D. Luckey is a seasoned soldier and lawyer who retired from the U.S. Army as the commanding general of America’s Army Reserve and lives in Jackson Springs. He is a full-time student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

NSL4A member and retired U.S. Navy Captain Jon Duffy has written about the use of American military forces to carry out apparently extrajudicial killings of narco kingpins and traffickers. This op-ed by Duffy, who writes about leadership and democracy, was published by the Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2026. He questions the justification for turning criminal suspects into military targets and calls on military leaders engaged in the attacks to publicly justify why they consider them lawful.

We recommend you read other articles on this topic including: “Counterterrorism or Summary Executions,” by Greg Smith, and “Release the Video,” by Eugene R. Fidell.

Military leaders are enabling Trump’s lawlessness

By Jon Duffy

Published in the Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2026

In January, the United States sent military forces into Venezuela, killing more than 50 people, to capture Nicolás Maduro to face federal charges. By even the most generous reading that raid was legally questionable. A more honest reading sees it as an illegal use of military force to accomplish what the government itself treated as a criminal prosecution. But at least the administration still pretended that justice was the point.

Now even that pretense is disappearing. On [June 12], President Trump announced that the U.S. military had killed Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the alleged leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, in a strike inside Venezuela. Before the strike, the government treated Guerrero Flores as a criminal suspect. The Justice Department had pursued his indictment and prosecution through the lawful tools of the criminal justice system.

The administration, after months of killing alleged traffickers without public legal justification, has now taken the next step by using the military to kill an indicted criminal suspect instead of bringing him to trial. The president is abusing military power. Worse, military leaders are enabling him. And unless they can explain, publicly and plainly, what lawful authority permits these killings, they cannot hide behind the justification that they are merely following orders. They are helping turn the military into an instrument for evading the rule of law.

The government’s charging document laid out a damning case against Guerrero Flores. It described a sprawling law enforcement investigation involving federal prosecutors, the DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshals, local police and foreign partners. It accused Guerrero Flores of terrible crimes: racketeering, drug trafficking, firearms offenses and support for terrorism. If those allegations are true, he was a dangerous criminal. But the document also made clear, as every criminal case must, that the charges were accusations and that the defendant was presumed innocent until proven guilty.

I have no sympathy for drug traffickers, cartels or transnational criminal networks. People who break the law should be investigated, arrested, tried and, if convicted, punished. But there is no legal loophole that allows the government to execute the accused because the accusation is ugly or the defendant is easy to hate.

The Trump administration has been evading that principle for months, using the military to kill more than 200 people without producing public evidence that any of them were lawful military targets. Now the logic has moved from unidentified men in boats to an indicted defendant in the criminal justice system.

U.S. military leaders should understand that distinction better than anyone. Officers are trained to know the difference between combat and law enforcement, between lawful targeting and unlawful killing. Yet those leaders continue to carry out killings the government has not publicly justified under any clear legal authority.

Civilian control of the military requires obedience to lawful orders, not blind participation in whatever form of violence a president chooses to rename as war. The word “lawful” is not decorative. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may order and defend this campaign, but they do not personally build target packages, launch aircraft or fire missiles. The military does that. That makes military leaders accountable participants, not background figures.

Every American should want to know whether the armed forces now accept that the president has the authority to transform criminal suspects into military targets by declaration, and if so, under what justification. That question does not stop at the water’s edge. Once a president can recast criminal law enforcement as war, the danger is not confined to Venezuela or foreign battlefields. A president already eager to use troops at home should not be handed a military precedent for turning crime into combat.

I understand that acknowledging this is uncomfortable. Americans are accustomed to showing wide deference to senior military leaders, treating them as dutiful public servants rather than possible enablers of presidential lawlessness. But respect for the military cannot require pretending it has no agency. If the armed forces are the instrument through which the president evades the Constitution, then the leaders of those armed forces must answer for their role.

Maybe senior military leaders have a lawful explanation for why the armed forces are killing criminal suspects instead of helping to bring them to justice. If they do, they should offer it. Publicly. Under oath. Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Adm. Frank Bradley, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and other senior officers involved in these campaigns owe the country more than silence or classified assurances. Under what legal authority are they carrying out these strikes? What evidence turns a suspected criminal into a military target? What process exists before the government kills rather than arrests?

Perhaps this is not cowardice. Perhaps it is not careerism. But when military leaders refuse to explain why they believe continuing to kill criminal suspects is lawful, the country has every reason to conclude they cannot justify it. From here, it looks like a military leadership class choosing silence, obedience and career preservation over the Constitution it swore to defend.

The military has become one of the mechanisms by which the president is ignoring constitutional limits. The question under this administration has always been whether military leaders would refuse illegal orders when the test finally came. The record so far looks bleak.

If senior leaders can defend these killings, they should do so plainly. If they cannot, they should stop carrying them out or resign. And if they continue executing unlawful violence, accountability should not end with the president who ordered it. It should reach the military leaders who made it possible.

Photo: Via Donald J. Trump, “Truth Social,” Video Grab, Jun 12, 2026

Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. He writes about leadership and democracy.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General and NSL4A member, Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published June 16, 2026, on “Paul’s Substack - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, he talks about the problems some “battle-ready warriors” face reentering society after their military service — high divorce rates, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide. Smith shares a personal story of tragic consequences for one such soldier and he provides a recommendation for mitigating the dangers.

Jack in the Box

I first met Jack as he shifted and pouted like a petulant child in a courtroom. I was a volunteer in a program to keep veterans who were convicted of minor offenses out of jail. Sensing that the judge’s patience was evaporating quickly, I asked to conference with Jack in the hallway outside the courtroom.

“You need to lose the attitude ASAP and show that judge some respect,” I growled. “Or else you can plan on spending some more time behind bars.”

“I’m sick of his shit,” he shot back. “In fact I’m sick of this whole program.”

“Well, it’s up to you, Pal. But think of your wife and kids before you do something stupid in there that gets you locked up.”

He said nothing, just looked down at his well-worn combat boots. After a few moments and a few deep breaths, he shook his head and walked back into the courtroom with me.

Share

I can’t tell you we ever became good friends. I tried to help him and I think he understood that I was on his side. I never learned his full story, but I knew a few details. Jack was a US Army sergeant in an engineer unit that detonated IEDs in Iraq. I think he was injured overseas. When he returned home, he fell into drug addiction - probably started by the oxycontin prescribed for his back pain. Jack eventually became tangled in the criminal justice system because of petty crime to support his habit.

What I saw in court was a charismatic, intelligent - snarky at times - guy who was bitter that the system hadn’t worked out for him. Other veterans in the program admired his wit and independence - he was a natural leader. Jack was often accompanied in court by his wife, a quiet woman whose warm smile barely concealed lots of pain and anxiety. They had several kids, one of whom was headed to college. I think Jack sincerely wanted to get his criminal record behind him, shake his addiction, and start a new and better life - but things don’t always work out that way.

I was saddened, but not surprised when I heard that Jack had a drug relapse, overdosed, and fell down a flight of stairs. His injuries were fatal. I decided to attend his funeral, expecting to sit behind his wife and kids in an empty church.

However, when I arrived at his funeral, I had trouble finding a parking space. To my amazement, the church was packed with mourners. Speaker after speaker told sad, poignant, and even funny stories about Jack the Little League star, Jack the dependable paper boy, Jack the Boy Scout, Jack who faithfully mowed their lawn, Jack the friendly neighbor … I almost wondered if I was at the right funeral.

I thought long and hard about what Jack had taught me. In the United States Army we do an excellent job of turning All-American boys and girls into warriors who will fight and win tomorrow’s wars. Our soldiers are the key element that makes us the world’s most formidable fighting force. During training soldiers gradually learn how to shut off voices of reflection, compassion, and mercy as they demonize our nation’s enemies and prepare to kill or capture them. And I don’t take issue with that - soldiers must summon righteous anger and rage to have the emotional strength needed to kill another person - and they can’t be troubled by nagging thoughts that the target is someone’s brother or sister, husband or wife, son or daughter. Our nation has been at war, off and on, for nearly a century - citizens who are prepared to kill our enemies in defense of our homeland are essential for our collective defense.

But here’s the problem - when they transition out of the military, we don’t teach former warriors to be human again. Having shut off the emotions that interfere with a soldier’s ability to kill, we don’t know how to flick the switch that turns on the elements of “our better angels.” And the evidence is in the numbers - nearly 18 US veterans take their lives every day, which is considerably higher than the national average. About 4% of military marriages end in divorce each year, double the rate for civilian marriages. Not surprisingly, estimated rates of substance abuse among veterans vary from 14% to 18% - numbers that are significantly higher than the general population. This data set should serve as a “check engine” light for our society that our veterans aren’t getting what they need.

When a soldier returns from a war zone, they almost certainly want one thing - to go home and resume their previous lives as much as possible. They’re required to complete mental health surveys and usually they’re screened by counselors. If a reservist reports any psychological symptoms, he or she is retained on active duty to receive psychological support. Active duty soldiers who report psychological symptoms will receive mental health services. But they’ll also have modified duties, possibly they’ll be transferred to another unit, or potentially separated from the service. There’s also the stigma of seeking mental health support which, like it or not, is still viewed as a weakness within our warrior culture. Needless to say, many soldiers who are experiencing mental health issues, including PTSD symptoms, never report them in fear of the consequences. And as a result, many veterans reenter the civilian world having never received the mental health support they badly need to avoid relationship conflicts, substance abuse, or self-harm.

So what’s the answer? I can’t say for certain, but I offer one recommendation that could help reduce the severity of the crisis. I contend that every soldier who returns from a tour of duty in a combat zone should be treated as if they are experiencing mental health issues. Brief family reunification leave must be facilitated, but the unit as a whole must be quickly returned to duty for a period of mental health support that includes wellness education, group counseling, and mandatory individual consultation. Most importantly, the program must have a fixed duration, so no one can exploit an “I’m fine, I’m out of here” early exit while denying deeper issues. I won’t pretend that many soldiers would view this training period as “needless bullshit,” but many will also quietly benefit from the interventions and skill-building that may prevent future tragedies that lurk down the road. Likewise, all soldiers transitioning off active duty or retiring should be required to attend brief, but similar, mental health support seminars prior to completing out-processing.

No one really knows why soldiers divorce, abuse drugs and alcohol, and take their own lives more often than their civilian counterparts. I believe that part of the answer lies in how we train soldiers for warfare, yet fail to prepare them for peace. Jack taught me that we crank the handle to make All-American boys and girls spring forward as battle-ready warriors. But we have little idea how to help them settle back into their roles as human beings who can problem-solve, cope, seek help when they need it, and live life to its fullest.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

This article was written by NSL4A member Martha Duncan a frequent contributor to Voices of Experience. She is a retired DoD senior executive who served 37 years, including 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves. Today she issues a warning that democracies require vigilance. She states the case for a systematic approach to indications and warning, as intelligence officers do for national security, to act in defense of democracy before overtaken by events.

When Alarm Bells Must Ring: Why Democracy Needs an Indications and Warning System

By Martha Duncan

“The greatest failures in national security are often not failures of collection. They are failures of recognition.” (Author)

For decades, intelligence professionals have understood a simple truth: crises rarely emerge without warning. Wars do not begin with the first shot. Terrorist attacks do not materialize without preparation. Financial collapses, pandemics, and natural disasters all exhibit signals long before catastrophe becomes obvious. The challenge is not whether warning signs exist. The challenge is whether institutions and citizens recognize them before events overtake them.

The same principle applies to democracy.

Today, many Americans assume that voting rights and constitutional processes are self-sustaining. We trust that elections will be conducted fairly, that ballots will be counted, and that institutions will continue to function because they always have.

Share

History suggests otherwise. Democracies, like nations, require vigilance. They depend upon citizens and institutions that are capable of recognizing danger before the damage becomes irreversible. That is why a growing number of scholars, election officials, journalists, legal experts, and former national security professionals have begun thinking about election integrity through a different lens.

Indications and Warning (I&W) is an intelligence process and methodology to detect, monitor, and analyze an adversary’s preparation for conflict. Some former intelligence professionals, including friends and former colleagues, are informing the public of voting interference, adapting the I&W process to election security and integrity concerns.

Intelligence professionals understand warnings. The intelligence community does not wait for tanks to cross borders before sounding an alarm. Its purpose is to identify patterns and indicators that suggest emerging threats. Warning systems exist because decision makers rarely receive the luxury of certainty. They must act amidst ambiguity, incomplete information, and competing explanations.

Most warning indicators, by themselves, are explainable. One troop movement may mean little. One cyber intrusion may be routine. One inflammatory statement may be dismissed. But experienced analysts understand that patterns matter more than individual events.

I served as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency for eleven years, I know. Signals accumulate. Relationships emerge. Probabilities shift. Eventually, enough indicators converge that responsible professionals conclude that the risk environment has changed. Our democracy’s resilience deserves the same discipline.

Election Interference Is Rarely One Event

Many Americans still imagine election interference as something dramatic—a foreign cyberattack, ballot box stuffing, or obvious fraud. Yet the modern threat landscape is far more subtle. Election interference can involve any of the following:

• Administrative pressure;

• Legal maneuvers;

• Voter intimidation;

• Disinformation campaigns;

• Efforts to undermine confidence in election officials;

• Selective investigations;

• Attempts to delay certification;

• Threats against election workers;

• Confusion regarding procedures;

• Narrative campaigns designed to preemptively delegitimize results.

None of these actions, standing alone, necessarily constitute a crisis. But crises are rarely defined by isolated incidents. They are defined by accumulation. In intelligence terminology, analysts speak of convergence. The question is never: “Has democracy collapsed?” The question is: “Are enough warning indicators converging to suggest that democratic resilience is under increasing stress?”

Democracy as a System Under Stress

The United States has long relied upon an intricate architecture of checks and balances. Courts. State election officials. Congress. Professional civil servants. Independent media. Civil society organizations. Public trust.

These institutions constitute what might be called democracy’s immune system. But like immune systems democratic resilience can weaken under pressure. Pressure can be applied simultaneously across multiple areas. Confidence can erode gradually. Norms can weaken. Laws can become instruments of political advantage rather than neutral administration. Institutions that once operated independently can become increasingly personalized.

No single event announces this transformation. As political scientist Juan Linz warned decades ago, democracies often die through the erosion of guardrails rather than through sudden coups. The United States has no shortage of democratic institutions, but most are reactive, jurisdiction-specific, politically constrained, or issue-specific. Courts adjudicate cases. Congress investigates and legislates. The media reports. Election officials administer. Civil society advocates and monitors. Each performs an essential function, but none is designed to operate as a disciplined, nonpartisan, cross-domain indications and warning capability focused on democratic resilience.

That is the gap the Election Interference Warning Set is intended to help fill. Its purpose is to assist democratic institutions by identifying converging patterns and emerging risks early enough that lawful and constitutional responses remain available. In military operations parlance, I&W helps states and their election officials stay “left of boom.”

Why Warning Matters

National security professionals understand another painful truth. Most failures are not failures of information. Pearl Harbor. September 11. The Iraq insurgency. The COVID pandemic. In each case, warning indicators existed. Information was available. What proved difficult was recognizing the significance of those signals amid uncertainty and normalcy bias.

Democratic erosion presents a similar challenge. Citizens naturally assume that because democracy survived previous crises, it will survive future ones. Hope is not an early-warning mechanism.

Alarm Bells Are Not Panic

Some critics argue that discussing threats to democratic processes creates unnecessary fear. But warning and panic are not the same thing. Fire inspections don’t cause buildings to burn. Weather forecasts don’t cause hurricanes. Public health warnings do not create viruses.

Warning systems exist precisely because societies deserve the opportunity to act before emergencies become irreversible. Responsible warning is not hysteria. It is stewardship. In fact, the absence of warning would represent a greater failure. History is filled with societies that ignored accumulating signals because acknowledging them was uncomfortable.

The Citizen as Watch Stander

Military operations centers maintain continuous watch because threats do not announce themselves. Someone must remain attentive. Someone must notice changes. Someone must ask difficult questions. Democracies require watch standers as well. Journalists. Election officials. Judges. Scholars. Veterans. Community leaders. Ordinary citizens. These individuals perform a function every bit as important as traditional national security warning system. Not because they predict outcomes. Not because they advocate for political parties. But because they help societies recognize patterns while corrective mechanisms still exist.

Why Daily Election Warning Matters

Increasingly, independent organizations are publishing structured assessments and warning summaries concerning election integrity. These efforts resemble the watch functions long employed in national security—not because democracy is warfare, but because free societies deserve the same discipline of early recognition that governments routinely apply to military, economic, and public health threats. Their objective is not to predict catastrophe. Their objective is to preserve transparency.

Such efforts seek to answer questions familiar to every intelligence professional:

• What is happening?

• Is it unusual?

• Is it isolated or systemic?

• Are patterns emerging?

• Are warning indicators increasing?

• What institutions are affected?

• What actions are available?

These are not partisan questions. They are democratic questions. And democracies that stop asking such questions become vulnerable to surprise.

We must ring the alarm before the fire! In his 1852 speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Wendell Phillips said “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.”

Vigilance, however, is more than attention. Vigilance requires systems. It requires evidence. It requires discipline. Vigilance requires citizens willing to recognize uncomfortable realities. Democracy is not self-executing. Voting rights do not defend themselves. Constitutions do not enforce themselves. Like every system worth preserving, democratic institutions depend upon people who understand that warning is not pessimism or alarmism. It is responsibility.

The purpose of alarm bells is not to frighten. It is to awaken. Because history repeatedly teaches the same lesson: By the time everyone hears the alarm, the window to prevent the fire may already have closed.

The Election Interference Warning process and similar efforts represent something larger than reporting. They embody a principle long understood in national security: surprise is expensive, vigilance is cheaper, and early warning is the first line of defense. Democracy deserves no less.

Martha Duncan is a retired U.S. Department of Defense senior executive with 37 years of service in national security and intelligence, including 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserves with deployments to Panama, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. She served 11 years at the Defense Intelligence Agency as a Latin America analyst and HUMINT specialist, and is recognized for leadership in intelligence operations, coalition-building, and enterprise-level policy development across the U.S. Army, DIA, and the broader Intelligence Community.

About National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan network of over 1,500 senior national security professionals—retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—from across the political spectrum who are united in defense of American democracy. Founded in 2021, NSL4A is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for democratic values, institutions, and leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Our members offer expert, real-world insights on the national security implications of election integrity, civil-military relations, and democratic resilience.

Media Contact: CommDirector@nsl4a.org

Restricting the press endangers democracy, accountability and the trust of the American people and its military, as I wrote last fall in defense of the First Amendment and the Pentagon press corps,

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest set of restrictions on the free press are damaging to our military as an institution, our service members and their families, and the American people. They are contrary to the Constitution that all service members have fought and died to protect and defend. His spokesman’s explanation for the latest change – the effective closure of the Pentagon press office -- is insulting and ludicrous, and I’ll explain why.

On June 1, Hegseth ordered the Pentagon press office to be closed to reporters and turned into a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, commonly known as a “skiff” (SCIF). The rationale of Joel Valdez, the acting press secretary, was to provide a space for Pentagon speechwriters.

That claim, as well as one proclaiming the Pentagon under Hegseth as “the most transparent War Department in history,” is ludicrous. First, the actions taken to restrict the press and control access to all information, unclassified and other, as well as refusing to allow reporters to embed or embark with military units during operations mark this Department as the least transparent and most opaque I have seen.

The new rules followed a walkout by many journalists in October as the Pentagon cut their access in the building and their mass rejection of imposed restrictions.

As background, for several decades the Pentagon, has had a dedicated office, staffed by military and civilian public affairs professionals, to provide “timely, accurate information” to the American people and the world via the free press. Reflecting its mission, the office has been referred to as the Pentagon press office or press operations office.

I was honored to serve as one of those public affairs professionals. I am intimately familiar with the office and its operations, having first served as a Department of Defense press officer during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, then as the office’s director during the Obama presidency.

In the Pentagon press office from 2000-2003, I was directly involved in communication planning and responding to media queries from around the world about the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., the start of combat operations in Afghanistan and the start of combat operations in Iraq. I was also deeply involved in helping create the media embed program for Iraq. It placed approximately 700 news media representatives, both U.S.-based and international, with U.S. military forces as the war began.

Throughout that period, I and my press office colleagues had regular access to restricted access spaces and classified information systems to facilitate public affairs planning and operations, both for military exercises and combat operations. The press office was not closed to reporters during that critical period, nor after I left it for another assignment. In addition, speechwriters did not need designated space to access classified information. Given their role in preparing public remarks, they didn’t need regular access to classified information anyway. So, declaring the press office needed to be closed to provide space for speechwriters didn’t pass the smell test.

I returned to the Pentagon press office in 2009, after deployment to Iraq. Even there we continued to provide access and information to reporters during combat operations. I became the director of that office and then later I was assigned as acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, overseeing the press office, we continued to provide full access to Pentagon reporters. I engaged individual journalists and groups of the Pentagon press corps in my offices to provide information and answer questions.

I still had access to classified information, as needed for my job, but our spaces were open to reporters. It was my job, and responsibility, to protect classified and sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure. That fact has not changed, despite Hegseth’s unnecessary and unconstitutional restrictions.

If the Pentagon press office could remain open, with access to reporters during those times of crisis and war, why close it now?

The Pentagon press office is not there as a “courtesy” to journalists, but as a conduit between the military and the American public we serve. It’s how we have built and maintained trust over decades, during war and peacetime. Our active engagement with the free press protects and supports democratic accountability. Most importantly, a fully functioning press office communicates to service members, their families, our allies and partners, and the American people. Closing it damages credibility and trust.

The Pentagon press corps – as it existed before the latest set of restrictions – was one of the most knowledgeable and experienced group of national security journalists in the world. The military and civilian professionals of the office interacted daily with the Pentagon press corps and with journalists around the world, providing the “timely, accurate information” required not only by DoD policy, but expected by the people we serve.

That term comes from the DoD Principles of Information, codified in DoD Directive 5122.05 and still in effect today under the Trump administration. In keeping with those longstanding policies, the Pentagon press office’s main function is to provide information about the department and military operations and issues. It does so through interviews with DoD officials, on-camera press briefings, on the record, off-camera “gaggles,” published press releases, and through regular interviews or discussions with Pentagon press officers.

The office has served the on-site Pentagon press corps as well as journalists in the U.S. and around the world who request information or interviews. This is how the Pentagon press office operated before my tenure and since, until the draconian restrictions were placed on the resident press corps and other news organizations.

When I was the press office director, I oversaw approximately two dozen service members and DoD civilians. The military positions were normally filled by highly qualified and experienced public affairs officers in the grades of O-4 and O-5; the civilians in the grades of GS-13 to 15.

With the closure of the press office, what happens to them? What duties will they have under a Pentagon that is anti-press, assigned to an office that no longer allows journalists to visit? Will they be relegated to answering calls and emails, only to provide approved talking points from political appointees? Or will only political appointees be permitted to respond to media queries? These changes are contrary to the mission of the office.

Some may argue that in the age of social media platforms, the Department can provide information directly to the public without involving the press, that the Pentagon press office is a vestige of the past. I argue that in this environment, independent reporting by accountable, credible journalists and organizations is more necessary than ever. With the prevalence of mis- and disinformation on the Internet and social media, the explosion of AI and deep fakes, the public is better served by verifiable sources of information from reputable, experienced journalists, attributed directly to accountable military and DoD civilian professionals.

The professional interactions between press officers and Pentagon reporters provide needed context and hard facts so the American public can understand how its military is being employed, and so service members and their families remain well-informed through independent sources, not just sanctioned – and often sanitized – information from political officials.

The restrictions on the press overturned decades of Pentagon policy, practice, and openness. To what end? There was no obvious problem that needed to be fixed. The speed by which these changes took place demonstrate there was no careful study by public affairs professionals if there was a need to create more effective and efficient operations. These changes serve neither the American people nor the service members and their families who rely on truthful, accurate information about the U.S. military and its functioning.

A shorthand description of the DoD Principles of Information used for decades has been “Maximum Disclose, Minimum Delay.” The Pentagon under Hegseth has not lived up to that maxim.

The trust and credibility the public expects of its military has been severely degraded. Unless the courts step in to correct these flawed policies, it may take a generation to rebuild and repair the damage. For a country at war, that’s too long, and too dangerous.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert talks to the media about the status of the Navy during a press conference in the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on June 27, 2012. (DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Peter D. Lawlor, U.S. Navy.

David Lapan | Retired Marine Corps Colonel David Lapan has more than 30 years of military service and 20+ years of communication/Public Affairs experience, including at the highest levels of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a Public Affairs Officer, he served as a Pentagon spokesman and advisor under three Secretaries of Defense; special assistant to the 18^th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; senior advisor to the Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces – Afghanistan; and as spokesman for multinational forces during military operations in Haiti and Iraq.

This article was written by NSL4A member Martha Duncan for the Steady State Substack as part of their series highlighting the new book, “Common Sense: Take 2, A Call to Renew Democracy,” by Russ Travers. The book focuses on the institutional, civic and cultural work needed to address what he calls not simply a political crisis but a deeper crisis of democratic capacity. Travers was a career public servant across multiple administrations and retired as Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. The Steady State is publishing articles on each of the book’s five themes, with this article by Duncan addressing “Democracy as a Patient.”

Martha Duncan, a frequent contributor to NSL4A’s Voices of Experience, is a retired DoD senior executive who served 37 years, including 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves.

Common Sense: Take 2, A Call to Renew Democracy

By Martha Duncan

America’s democratic challenge is often described through the lens of elections, candidates, or administrations. We speak of democratic crisis as if it arrives every four years and departs when ballots are counted. History suggests otherwise.

Democracies rarely weaken because of a single election. They do not usually fail because one leader arrives, one court rules, one party wins, or one movement gains strength. More often, democratic erosion emerges gradually through accumulated institutional stress: declining trust, weakening oversight, civic disengagement, information fragmentation, legislative paralysis, and the growing belief that government no longer works in ways citizens experience as fair, competent, or responsive. Democracy behaves less like a machine than a living system: when several organs weaken simultaneously, the whole body begins to lose resilience, including the capacity to correct, adapt, and govern..

This is where conversations about authoritarianism matter.

Authoritarian governance rarely arrives announcing itself from one day to the next. More often, it appears first as concentration: more power flowing upward alleging to “fix” an eroding democracy. and becomes increasingly powerful as a result of fewer institutions acting independently, increasing personalization of authority, weakening constraints, loyalty replacing expertise, and public frustration that makes simplified answers appear attractive.

My family and I lived through it under General Manuel Noriega, Panama’s de facto military dictator from 1983 until Operation Just Cause in December 1989 removed him from power. Strongman politics has always drawn energy from institutional fatigue. When people lose confidence that legislatures can legislate, agencies can function, courts can be trusted, information can be verified, or civic participation can matter, the appeal of certainty from a strongman grows. Complexity becomes exhausting. Pluralism begins to feel inefficient. Democratic friction, the very thing designed to prevent abuse, starts to look like failure.

The challenge before us is larger than resisting any single personality, election cycle, or political movement, although that, we must do. But even if immediate threats pass, unresolved institutional weakness remains. Democracies that restore surface stability without repairing underlying capacity often discover the crisis was delayed rather than solved. We may win the moment and still lose the future. If democratic resilience is the goal, then the task ahead is not nostalgic restoration but a rebuilding of democratic capacity.

If democracy is a patient suffering from multiple interconnected stresses, then the observations offered by Russ Travers serve as both diagnosis and framework for renewal. They remind us that democratic renewal cannot be achieved through elections alone; it requires rebuilding the legitimacy, capability, and public trust of the institutions upon which self-government depends.

Renewal means rebuilding civic trust. Renewal means strengthening institutional capacity. Renewal means restoring confidence that constitutional systems still function as intended—not perfectly, but credibly. Renewal means ensuring that rule of law remains stronger than personalities and institutions and that that those institutions remain larger than factions. It also means accepting an uncomfortable truth: democratic resilience is measured not by how societies behave during calm periods, but by how they respond under stress. That raises hard questions: Do institutions adapt? Do citizens remain engaged? Does oversight continue? Do independent voices survive? Can disagreement exist without democratic rupture?

Answers to these questions increasingly define the future of our self-government. There are reasons for optimism. History shows that democratic systems possess an extraordinary ability to correct when citizens remain committed to them. Institutions can recover. Trust can be rebuilt. Civic culture can renew itself. Democratic legitimacy can be strengthened.

But none of these occur automatically. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires maintenance. It requires participation. It requires institutions capable of doing difficult things over long periods of time. And perhaps most importantly, it requires citizens willing to think beyond the immediate and ask harder questions about what kind of democratic system future generations will inherit.

America’s democratic challenge is therefore not only to reverse authoritarian tendencies in the present. We also need to build enough resilience to ensure that future generations are not forced to confront the same vulnerabilities again. The work ahead will be long. Institutional repair rarely fits election cycles. Trust rebuilds slowly. Capacity develops over years. Civic culture evolves across generations.

Democracies have survived difficult periods before because citizens chose engagement over resignation and stewardship over complacency. The American experiment has always depended on that choice. Our challenge is not merely to preserve democracy as it was. It is to strengthen democracy, so it remains capable of governing, adapting, and renewing itself in the century ahead. Because self-government is not an inheritance that renews automatically. It is a responsibility. And resilience is how republics endure.

Martha Duncan is a retired U.S. Department of Defense senior executive with 37 years of service, including 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves, where she also served as Reserve Attache. She had three operational deployments to Panama, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. At DIA, she worked as a Latin American analyst for 11 years. A specialist in human intelligence (HUMINT), she is recognized for her leadership in intelligence operations, coalition-building, and enterprise-level policy development across the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the U.S. Army, and the broader Intelligence Community. She grew up in Panama during the rise of Manuel Noriega and was instrumental in his capture.

About National Security Leaders for America

National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan network of over 1,500 senior national security professionals—retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—from across the political spectrum who are united in defense of American democracy. Founded in 2021, NSL4A is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for democratic values, institutions, and leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Our members offer expert, real-world insights on the national security implications of election integrity, civil-military relations, and democratic resilience.

Media Contact: CommDirector@nsl4a.org

NSL4A member and retired U.S. Navy Captain Jon Duffy has written about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocking promotions recommended by a Navy rear admiral selection board. Among the nine officers removed from the list were three women and two Black men. This op-ed by Duffy, who writes about leadership and democracy, was published by the Los Angeles Times on June 10, 2026. He provided background and context on military selection boards, “They are disciplined, rules-based and designed to ensure that the best officers rise to lead.” Duffy argued that despite Hegseth calling for merit as guiding military service he has undermined that standard.

We recommend you read the National Security Leaders for America statement from June 2, 2026, on merit-based military promotions that NSL4A stands “firmly in support of a military promotion system built on merit, readiness, professionalism and military effectiveness.” Also read Martha Duncan’s Substack article, “Merit, Service, and the Constitution: Why Rolling Back Women’s Military Advancement Is Unacceptable.”

Hegseth’s meddling with promotions tarnishes leadership and endangers the country

By Jon Duffy

When the Navy’s one-star admiral promotion list was publicly released last month, one thing stood out immediately: There were no women on it. Anyone familiar with the normal results of the service’s promotion boards knew that was unusual. Qualified women had not suddenly disappeared from the Navy’s bench.

The explanation came soon enough. According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had personally intervened to block the promotions of nine Navy officers selected by a board of senior admirals, including three women and two Black men. What at first appeared to be an odd list soon looked instead like direct political interference in a system meant to elevate the Navy’s best.

Share

Hegseth has also intervened in Army promotions. He removed four Army colonels — two Black men and two women — from the brigadier general promotion list in March. According to Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, those officers had long records of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong.

Army Chief of Staff General Randy George tried to raise concerns directly with Hegseth about the interference in early April. In response, Hegseth fired him. The message to the rest of the force was unmistakable: defending the integrity of the system will cost you your career.

This is not simply a personnel controversy. The defense secretary is cancelling the results of merit-based promotion boards to suit his politics. That tells the force that professional judgment can be overruled by ideological preference and that the promotion system’s formal constraints can be bent to political ends.

This may sound like a niche military issue, but it matters to every American. Hegseth is injecting his own prejudices into who is trusted to lead the military Americans fund and depend on to defend the nation. When the leadership of that force is shaped by politics rather than excellence, the damage goes far beyond unfairness. The military is weaker, and the country is less safe.

Hegseth talks constantly about merit and standards. He has claimed “real toxic leadership” means promoting people for reasons other than merit. But merit would mean letting disciplined professional selection boards identify and advance the best officers to lead. Standards would mean applying the same rules consistently rather than bending them around politics and personal preference.

By those measures, the secretary’s own conduct is damning. The same reporting that says he stopped the promotion of officers who met the Navy’s standards also says Hegseth pressed Navy leaders to add his military assistant to the promotion list even though that officer lacked the command experience required to qualify.

Military promotion boards are not bureaucratic trivia. They are one of the clearest ways the institution signals what it values. They are disciplined, rules-based and designed to ensure that the best officers rise to lead. In my experience, they are as merit-based a process as human beings can build. When the defense secretary overrides those judgments for reasons that appear tied to personal prejudice, politics, race or gender, he damages confidence in the process itself.

Under Pentagon rules, officers can be removed from promotion lists for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about fitness to lead. That is a serious safeguard and its use is rare. It is not intended as a political editing tool. It exists to preserve confidence that the process remains apolitical and performance-based.

A visible pattern of removing women and minority officers from promotion lists sends a message far beyond the officers directly affected. It tells servicemembers that performance is not enough if they do not fit the profile the secretary appears to prefer. Policies and rhetoric like this do not just settle political scores. They shape who raises a hand to join, who chooses to stay and who sees a future in the military.

The doubt this pattern creates is not confined to one list. It spreads through the force, from officers competing for promotion to service members expected to follow those selected, and to their families who trust the institution to put the right people in charge. Hegseth has not only hurt the officers he removed. He has tarnished the officers he left on the list. Even if they were the best officers for those roles, it is now reasonable for members of the military to ask whether they were chosen because they earned it or because they were more aligned with his politics, preferences or the kind of fealty this administration rewards. That may be unfair to officers who have earned their place entirely on merit, but Hegseth owns that unfairness.

The military is strengthened by promoting capable women and Black officers with exemplary records. It is weakened when trust in merit is replaced by suspicion, when professionalism is subordinated to political signaling and when the institution’s own judgments no longer command confidence. In an all-volunteer force, that kind of doubt is poison.

Service members do not just volunteer to serve. They volunteer to place their lives in the hands of others and to trust that the institution will reward excellence and elevate the best available leaders. Hegseth has left them to wonder whether the people who lead them were chosen because they were the best prepared to think, fight and lead, or because they were more politically acceptable to the administration now in charge.

The man shouting loudest about merit has corrupted it in favor of his own politics and prejudices.

Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. He writes about leadership and democracy.

About National Security Leaders for America

National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan network of over 1,500 senior national security professionals—retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—from across the political spectrum who are united in defense of American democracy. Founded in 2021, NSL4A is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for democratic values, institutions, and leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Our members offer expert, real-world insights on the national security implications of election integrity, civil-military relations, and democratic resilience.

Media Contact: CommDirector@nsl4a.org

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General and NSL4A member, Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published June 7, 2026, on “Paul’s Substack - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, he examines the situation the United States faces in the war with Iran by comparison to the warfare principles of Carl von Clausewitz. The 19^th century Prussian general, the so-called “Father of Warfare Theory,” expounded on the aims of wars, the elements for success and the adaptability of planning. Smith, a student of Clausewitz, holds that application of the theorist’s principles may have prevented America’s quandary in the Gulf.

Clausewitz on the Iran War

The US / Israeli war with Iran is far from over. Perhaps the many stated goals of the U.S. and Israel will ultimately be achieved - Iran’s nuclear potential eliminated, Islamic revolutionary regime banished, aid to terrorists cut off, military capability stunted, missiles destroyed, and democracy established. However I doubt that total victory for the US and Israel is a realistic expectation.

Hostilities continue despite the declared ceasefire. The war goes on, but I believe there are already lessons to be learned from how it has transpired thus far. Although he lived nearly 200 years ago, the military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, still offers a solid framework for the analysis of today’s conflicts.

Share

So why do we continue to examine the writing of a Prussian general from the 1800’s? Clausewitz’s theories, laid out in his classic treatise “On War,” are precise and remarkably pertinent to modern warfare. Time has proven the Prussian general’s principles and maxims to have enduring relevance and validity. In short, Clausewitz is to the study of war what Freud is to psychology, Mendel is to genetics, or Goddard is to rocket propulsion. To call him, “The Father of Warfare Theory” would be no exaggeration.

Here are three of Clausewitz’s maxims that have particular application to the war in Iran.

Clear and Consistent War Aims

What the United States and Israel intended to achieve by the preemptive strike on Iran was somewhat clear at the outset. On February 28th President Trump laid out the goals of the Iran War, which included elimination of the Iranian nuclear program, cessation of aid to the “region’s terrorist proxies,” destruction of the Iranian Navy and missile capability, as well as language that referred to regime change and the establishment of democratic governance. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks after the initial strikes were similar, focusing on the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capability, destruction of its missiles, and some references to regime change.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have been consistent in their goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear capability, but other statements about the intended outcomes of the Iran War have been confusing and contradictory. Now it appears that U.S. priorities in current negotiations are focused mainly on restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. Israel’s primary effort seems to be the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Moreover, friction between Trump and Netanyahu is growing over Israeli actions that endanger the fragile ceasefire with Iran.

Clausewitz must be rolling over in his grave. His writing is clear that, before the first shot is fired, nations must define their war aims and stick to them. A good example of fidelity to well-defined war aims was Operation Desert Storm, during which President George H. W. Bush assembled a multinational coalition and designated the firm goal of defeating Iraqi forces in Kuwait. After General Schwarzkopf executed a brilliant battle plan that swiftly defeated Saddam Hussein’s army in Kuwait, he ceased offensive operations. Many were frustrated by his reluctance to seize Iraqi territory, but Bush and Schwarzkopf refused to exceed the established war aims.

Desert Storm is regarded as a historic victory of U.S. diplomatic and military power because it quickly and decisively accomplished its well-defined goal. It’s doubtful that the U.S. conduct of the Iran War will achieve the same clear-cut results as Operation Desert Storm, nor is it likely that the Iran War will result in a decisive victory.

People Power

It’s significant that Clausewitz lists “the people” as his first element in the three factors that are essential to warfare. Clausewitz fought in the service of monarchs, so it’s doubtful that he was very supportive of democracy. But he certainly understood popular support as a force multiplier in warfare.

Obviously, the military (“commander and his army”) and the government are critical for executing battles and providing continued resources. However, Clausewitz recognized that the will of the people to serve in the military, contribute supplies or funds, and offer support to the war effort were indispensable. During World War Two, the stubborn resistance of the people of Stalingrad against the Nazi assault and the resolve of Londoners under nightly bombardment are examples of the power of the people’s will as a decisive factor in warfare.

In an apparent effort to optimize the element of surprise, President Trump chose not to enlist the support of the American people or their congressional representatives before launching the war in Iran. The collateral damage of increased inflation and rising gas prices has weakened popular support for the war, although most Americans agree that Iran should not have access to a nuclear weapon.

According to pollster Nate Silver, 57.4% of Americans oppose the war in Iran, while 36.3% support it (June 4, 2026). The unpopularity of the war has constrained President Trump’s warfighting options considerably in that U.S. voters would be highly unlikely to accept casualties from a ground assault or endorse escalating costs due to renewed missile launches and equipment losses during continued hostilities. Because the American people largely oppose the war, President Trump’s ability to apply leverage in negotiations with Iran is limited. The Iranian negotiators understand that Americans will express their opinions about the war and other issues at the polls in November. Although President Trump emphatically stated on May 27, 2026, “I don’t care about the midterms,” loss of Republican control of the House of Representatives or the Senate would present a serious setback to his agenda.

Flexible and Adaptable Plans

Clausewitz would be baffled by the failure of U.S. planners and decision-makers to anticipate and plan for Iran’s actions to close the Strait of Hormuz and launch missile strikes to cripple fuel supplies in the Middle East. The New York Times on June 2, 2026, reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard conducted a military exercise called, “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz” several weeks before the U.S. & Israeli assault.

The elements of the U.S. Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) include the development of Courses of Action (COA), which lay out the options available to the commander. The Courses of Action are then analyzed or “war gamed” to attempt to predict the enemy’s response and forecast second and third-order effects. Particular scrutiny is given to the “most likely” and “most dangerous” enemy responses. At length the commander chooses a primary Course of Action and operational plans are developed. However, the staff also prepares contingency plans in recognition that “fast moving environments” often create new realities.

Although it seems incredible, the U.S. military did not appear to develop contingency plans in response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, despite open-source intelligence that Iran would take that action. Even after Iran closed the Strait after the 28 February assault, the U.S. didn’t respond with the blockade of Iranian ports until April 13, 2026.

It seems that U.S. war plans depended on the assumption that swift, overwhelming air power would pummel the Iranian regime into quick submission. When the regime proved to be more resilient than expected, there were no apparent contingency plans. At the risk of repeating myself from previous Substacks, U.S. military planners would do well to study the resilience and agility of their Ukrainian counterparts who have quickly adapted their operational and tactical planning to “fast moving” Russian threats. Clausewitz would be proud of the military planners in Kyiv.

Author’s Note:

I first became acquainted with the writings of General von Clausewitz in my earliest days in ROTC, as I struggled to comprehend Army acronyms and idioms. (We truly speak a different dialect in the U.S. Army.) But I was fascinated by military theory and continued to study Clausewitz throughout my career, even as a student at the U.S. Army War College in preparation to become a senior leader.

Some may dismiss Clausewitz’s writings as musty, cobweb-ridden theorems from distant history. But I would argue that most of the insight contained in them is as relevant to warfighting today as it was on 19th and 20th-century battlefields. And I would go one step further - closer attention to the wisdom of Clausewitz would have prevented much of the mess our nation finds itself in today.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

About National Security Leaders for America

National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan network of over 1,500 senior national security professionals—retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—from across the political spectrum who are united in defense of American democracy. Founded in 2021, NSL4A is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for democratic values, institutions, and leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Our members offer expert, real-world insights on the national security implications of election integrity, civil-military relations, and democratic resilience.

Media Contact: CommDirector@nsl4a.org

When Americans think of the Vietnam War, most picture infantrymen in jungle fatigues, helicopter pilots, or prisoners of war. Far fewer picture the more than 11,000 American military women who served in Vietnam, many of them nurses who worked under combat conditions treating devastating injuries while enduring the same dangers, hardships, and trauma as their male counterparts.

Diane Carlson Evans was one of those women.

Share

As an Army nurse in Vietnam, she cared for wounded service members during one of the most difficult chapters in American military history. Yet when she returned home, she discovered something many women veterans experienced: their service was often invisible. The stories told about Vietnam rarely included them. The monuments built to commemorate the war did not reflect their contributions. Their sacrifices were acknowledged privately, if at all.

Rather than accepting that omission, Evans spent years leading the effort to establish the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her work was about far more than a statue. It was an effort to ensure that future generations would understand a simple historical fact: women have always served, always sacrificed, and always contributed to the defense of the nation.

That lesson extends well beyond Vietnam.

From the Revolutionary War to today’s military, women have played critical roles in America’s defense. They have served as nurses, intelligence officers, aviators, logisticians, diplomats, cyber specialists, commanders, and combat leaders. In every generation, women have expanded the boundaries of service while helping strengthen the effectiveness and readiness of the force.

Yet recognition has often lagged behind reality.

For decades, women veterans frequently encountered institutions designed around assumptions that veterans were male. Their service records were questioned. Their health needs were understudied. Their stories were underrepresented in museums, memorials, and public discussions about military service. While substantial progress has been made, women remain one of the fastest-growing veteran populations and continue to face unique challenges in accessing care, support, and recognition.

The legacy of Diane Carlson Evans reminds us that honoring military service requires more than words. It requires ensuring that all who serve are seen, remembered, and supported.

For organizations committed to national security, that responsibility extends beyond preserving history. It means recognizing that America’s strength has always depended upon the willingness of citizens from diverse backgrounds to answer the nation’s call. The story of women in military service is not a separate chapter in American history—it is American history.

As we reflect on Diane Carlson Evans’ life, we should remember that the Vietnam Women’s Memorial stands not only as a tribute to those who served in one war, but also as a reminder that service comes in many forms and that the nation’s obligation to its veterans extends to all who wore the uniform.

The most fitting tribute to her legacy is to continue ensuring that future generations of women who serve their country never have to fight for recognition upon returning home.

Diane Carlson Evans, founder and president of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, addresses an audience at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2009. The women’s memorial, erected 16 years ago, pays homage to the nurse corps comprising female servicemembers who deployed to Vietnam. (Photo: Defense.gov)

About National Security Leaders for America

National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan network of over 1,500 senior national security professionals—retired admirals, generals, senior enlisted leaders, intelligence officers, diplomats, and civilian service officials—from across the political spectrum who are united in defense of American democracy. Founded in 2021, NSL4A is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for democratic values, institutions, and leaders who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Our members offer expert, real-world insights on the national security implications of election integrity, civil-military relations, and democratic resilience.

This commentary was written by NSL4A member George Croner and published in the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” Substack on June 2, 2026. Croner is a former intelligence official, and attorney widely regarded as an expert on FISA and FISA Section 702. He writes extensively on U.S. national security, intelligence, and surveillance authorities. Here, Croner takes strong issue with the announcement by President Trump that Bill Pulte will be the new acting DNI. Croner points our Pulte’s lack of qualifications and willingness to weaponize the Federal Housing Finance Agency where he serves as director, to seek vengeance against Trump’s political enemies. A DNI using the post for political retribution will be dangerous. Moreover, the legal basis for the DNI’s post (50 U.S. Code) states they “shall have extensive national security expertise,” which Pulte apparently lacks. Nevertheless Pulte is being named “acting” DNI, so he will evade the Senate confirmation required of a nominee. Consider the assessment of Pulte’s appointment by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Vice Chair of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence.

Share

A Foolish Risk to U.S. National Security and an Unfathomable Insult to the Intelligence Community

This will not take long because some actions are so incredibly stupid and so bereft of logic or reasoning that the need for explanation or analysis is rendered superfluous. And so it is with the announcement that Trump has decided to appoint home-building heir William Pulte, a fellow traveler among the Affluenza and Trump’s current director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (and the self-appointed chairman of the government’s Goliath mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), to be the new acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

In one sense, Pulte is an unsurprising appointment for Trump. He embodies the downward spiral of incompetents Trump has named to serve in the post of America’s most senior intelligence official.

His predecessor is the recently departed Tulsi Gabbard who, as everyone including Trump, recognized before she was nominated, knows virtually nothing about the collection, processing and analysis of intelligence, or how it should best be used to protect the nation’s security. The last reported act of consequence by Gabbard prior to her resignations was traveling to Fulton County, Georgia presumably trying to find the “11,000 votes” that Trump claims would have swung the 2000 election his way. Gabbard engaged in other activities designed to further Trump’s mythology concerning the 2000 election, but any contributions she made to improving and facilitating the use of U.S. intelligence in protecting the national security are, and almost certainly will remain, unknown.

An even better correlation to the feckless Pulte’s selection is the spectacularly unqualified Richard Grenell, also appointed as “acting” in Trump’s first term so that he would never face Senate confirmation, who received a calamitous 96-day spin in the DNI’s chair while simultaneously serving as ambassador to Germany. You may recall that in Trump’s second term Grenell briefly headed the Kennedy Center where he offended nearly every patron and performer while masterminding the repugnant addition of Trump’s name to the Center before a federal judge, thankfully, ordered its removal. For his efforts, he is now Trump’s “Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions” - an empty, meaningless appellation perfectly suited for an empty, meaningless parasite.

This is the mold from which Trump draws the stooges he chooses to run the U.S. Intelligence Community. Pulte, quite literally, knows nothing about the collection, analysis or use of foreign intelligence notwithstanding that the congressional statute that created the DNI position requires that the occupant have “extensive national security expertise.” By naming him “acting” DNI, Trump assures that Pulte, like Grenell, will evade Senate confirmation. He has never served in the military (seemingly a badge of honor among the Affluenza), nor has he served in the diplomatic corps, or held any law enforcement position.

The available information about Pulte’s credentials is so sparse that it is unknown whether he even possesses a security clearance, and he certainly has never been cleared for access to the Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) with which he will need to be intimately familiar to do the DNI job. But, Pulte has no intention of performing the staggeringly complex task of running the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the world with tens of thousands of employees and a publicly disclosed annual budget in excess of $115.6 billion for FY 2026 - a budget which Pulte lacks the security clearance even to examine in any detail beyond those publicly released figures.

Instead, Pulte intends to continue to have his lunch delivered to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) where, as the self-appointed chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he can keep close eye on government mortgage practices that substantially impact the fortunes of his family’s sizable home building company - The PulteGroup. It is exactly the sort of conflict of interest that Donald Trump views as an attribute for virtually every position in his administration.

Pulte may be utterly vacuous about intelligence matters but he possesses the singular attribute that appeals to Trump - a pugnacious loyalty and the willingness to vigorously pursue retribution against Trump’s most hated critics. While leading the FHFA, Pulte has used his access to non-public mortgage information to carry the laboring oar in promoting accusations of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully pursued a civil fraud verdict against the Trump Organization, Senator Adam Schiff, a notable critic who spearheaded the impeachment efforts against Trump in his first term, and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook because … well, she is a Democrat who supported former Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s stance on interest rates. Cook and Schiff have never been charged. A grand jury rejected a proposed indictment of James and, speaking of Powell, Pulte was a vociferous critic of the former Fed Chairman and pushed for his removal - which, of course, endeared him to Trump.

Indeed, Pulte’s gleeful willingness to use his position at the FHFA, and information uniquely available to him in that position, to promote Trump’s vengeance tour becomes a much more serious concern with him as acting DNI. Mortgage applications are one thing, but from his new perch Pulte will have access to the keys to the kingdom in terms of classified information.

This already has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill where Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has noted Pulte’s new platform saying, ”There’s a lot of opportunity for mischief here.” John Thune, Senate Majority Leader, echoed Himes’ concerns saying, “We don’t need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals there.”

Bill Pulte is no intelligence professional. No career professional in the U.S. Intelligence Community will respect Bill Pulte as DNI - nor should they. Pulte’s glaring lack of qualifications is apparent. Worse, his appointment comes as the twice extended, mid-June deadline looms for renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, America’s most important intelligence collection program.

The sledding for renewing Section 702 was difficult enough for this incompetent administration before Trump’s idiotic appointment of this blustering neophyte. Nothing like a needless self-inflicted wound to make the situation worse.

George Croner is a former intelligence official and attorney widely regarded as an expert on FISA and FISA Section 702. He writes extensively on U.S. national security, intelligence, and surveillance authorities. Croner writes on the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” Substack.

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by NSL4A member Martha Duncan, a retired DoD senior executive who served 37 years, including 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves. Duncan confronts an announced Pentagon review of women’s qualifications for ground combat roles, assignments they have performed for years. She cites the recent Navy selection board results of zero women out of 22 officers tapped for promotion to one-star admiral as evidence of “historical exclusion” of women from key career-making assignments. There’s a direct cost, says Duncan, not only for the women involved but for the force, weakened by the loss of talent especially in a tough recruiting environment. She says the standards must be upheld and applied equally to give everyone willing to serve to have the opportunity.

We recommend you read today’s National Security Leaders for America statement on merit-based military promotions that NSL4A stands “firmly in support of a military promotion system built on merit, readiness, professionalism and military effectiveness.”

Share

Merit, Service, and the Constitution: Why Rolling Back Women’s Military Advancement Is Unacceptable

By Martha Duncan

The recent effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to revisit and potentially restrict women’s access to combat roles represents more than a personnel debate. It is a direct challenge to decades of military progress, professional meritocracy, and the constitutional principles the Armed Forces are sworn to defend.

For years, women in uniform have proven themselves under the same standards required of their male counterparts. They have led troops in combat, flown combat missions, commanded operational units, graduated from Ranger School, served aboard submarines, and deployed to some of the most dangerous regions in the world. They did not ask for lower standards. They asked for the opportunity to meet them.

Now, however, the Department of Defense is signaling a dangerous reversal.

A Pentagon-directed review examining whether women should continue serving in ground combat roles — combined with repeated public comments asserting that women do not belong in combat formations — sends a clear and deeply damaging message throughout the force. The issue is not simply assignment policy. Combat arms assignments are among the primary pathways to senior operational command and future flag officer promotion. Restricting access today directly limits who will lead tomorrow.

The consequences are already visible.

Last week, the administration announced 22 Navy captains were nominated for rear admiral (lower half). Not one was a woman.

Hidden Barriers

22 Names. Zero Women. How Did We Get Here?

Last week, the administration announced 22 Navy captains nominated for appointment to rear admiral, lower half…

Read more

a month ago · 49 likes · 69 comments · Hidden Barriers

The absence was striking, but not surprising. The explanation lies not in capability, but in historical exclusion. Women were barred from submarine service — one of the Navy’s most critical command pipelines — until 2010 for officers and 2015 for enlisted sailors. The effects of those restrictions continue to echo through today’s promotion system.

Opportunity compounds over time. When women were excluded from key operational assignments, they were simultaneously excluded from the experiences, command opportunities, mentorship networks, and career records that promotion boards traditionally reward. By the time officers reach consideration for flag rank, disparities that began decades earlier become institutionalized outcomes. This is not about social engineering. It is about fairness, readiness, and institutional integrity. The United States military functions best when advancement is based on demonstrated competence, leadership, discipline, and performance under pressure — not ideology, politics, or gender stereotypes. Efforts to reimpose barriers against women undermine the credibility of the promotion system and weaken confidence throughout the ranks.

Equally troubling are recent public remarks delivered by Secretary Hegseth at the United States Military Academy commencement ceremony, where he attacked diversity initiatives and dismissed the principle that diversity strengthens military capability. Such rhetoric is not merely divisive; it is corrosive to cohesion, professionalism, and trust inside a force built from every race, gender, ethnicity, and background in America. The military does not belong to one ideology, one demographic group, or one political movement. It belongs to the Constitution.

That principle matters deeply. The Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law through the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and the military justice system under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is rooted in principles of fairness, good order, and equal accountability. Policies designed to systematically narrow opportunities for qualified women raise profound ethical and constitutional concerns. A professional military cannot credibly claim to defend American values abroad while selectively restricting opportunity at home.

Nor can the nation afford the strategic cost.

The modern battlefield requires talent, intelligence, adaptability, technological expertise, and leadership drawn from the broadest possible pool of capable Americans. The Armed Forces face increasing recruitment and retention challenges across multiple services. Creating additional barriers for highly qualified women, or signaling that advancement pathways may be politically constrained, only accelerates the loss of talent and experience.

History is clear: militaries that limit opportunity based on identity rather than performance ultimately weaken themselves. Women serving today have already demonstrated courage, resilience, and operational competence under combat conditions. Many have sacrificed alongside their male counterparts, and some have given their lives in service to this nation. To now suggest they are inherently less capable, less suitable, or less deserving of opportunity dishonors that service and undermine the values the military exists to protect.

America’s military must remain a merit-based institution governed by constitutional principles, professional ethics, and operational excellence — not ideological grievance.

The path forward should be clear: maintain rigorous standards, apply them equally, and allow every qualified American willing to serve the opportunity to compete, lead, and advance.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Martha Duncan is a retired U.S. Department of Defense senior executive with 37 years of service in national security and intelligence, including 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserves with deployments to Panama, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. She served 11 years at the Defense Intelligence Agency as a Latin America analyst and HUMINT specialist, and is recognized for leadership in intelligence operations, coalition-building, and enterprise-level policy development across the U.S. Army, DIA, and the broader Intelligence Community.

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This commentary was written by NSL4A member Tom Jurkowsky, a retired Rear Admiral who served in the U.S. Navy for 31 years. He wrote this for the Baltimore Sun, it was published on Memorial Day, to remind that the holiday has been diminished by commercialization and misunderstanding of its meaning. NSL4A marked Memorial Day with our statement reaffirming commitment to the oath taken to the Constitution by those who made the supreme sacrifice. It affirms the responsibility we share to honor their service through continued fidelity to that oath.

Share

Remembering the True Meaning of Memorial Day

By Tom Jurkowsky

With Memorial Day upon us, many of us will be greeted with “Happy Memorial Day” wishes. Others will be looking for Memorial Day sales in various retail stores. And, of course, many will mark the day with barbecues, picnics and the start of summer runs to the beach.

Headstones stand at Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium, during the 2026 Memorial Day ceremony, May 23, 2026. The cemetery serves as the resting place for thousands of U.S. service members who died during World War II. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gretchen McCarty)

Unfortunately, with each passing year we continue to reinforce all the things that Memorial Day isn’t. One certainty is that it is not a “happy” holiday. Instead, it’s a holiday observed on the last Monday in May to honor the men and women who died — who died — while serving in the U.S. military. Some Americans unknowingly associate it with honoring those currently serving or who have served their country in uniform. As noble and respectful as those thoughts are, they’re incorrect.

Memorial Day first had its roots in the Civil War when it ended in the spring of 1865. We know this war was the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, claiming more than half a million lives. Several communities around the country used this time of year, springtime, to honor soldiers from their communities who had paid the ultimate sacrifice by placing flowers and offering prayers at their gravesites.

But one small community set itself apart from the others when a druggist in Waterloo, New York, in 1866 watched as a lone widow walked to the cemetery to place flowers on the grave of her deceased Civil War soldier and husband. The druggist, moved by the widow’s thoughtful actions, felt compelled to do something to honor those who died while serving their country.

He did, and Waterloo has gone on for 160 consecutive years to honor those who had fallen for their country by hosting a community-wide event. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo the official birthplace of Memorial Day because of its community-wide event during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags — just as the druggist did in 1866.

Sadly, we have cheapened the meaning of this very special day by, among other ways, commercializing it.

President Theodore Roosevelt captured the true meaning of Memorial Day in a speech he gave at Arlington Cemetery in 1902. Remember that many of those he was addressing had fought in the Civil War.

“It is a good custom for our country to have certain solemn holidays in commemoration of our greatest men and of the greatest crises in our history. There should be but few such holidays. To increase their number is to cheapen them,” Roosevelt said.

“Among the holidays which commemorate the turning points in American history, Thanksgiving has a significance peculiarly its own. On July 4 we celebrate the birth of the nation; on this day (Memorial Day), we call to mind the deaths of those who died that the nation might live, who wagered all that life holds dear for the great prize of death in battle, who poured out their blood like water in order that the mighty national structure … the great leaders of the Revolution, great framers of the Constitution, should not crumble into meaningless ruins,” Roosevelt continued.

Since our nation’s founding, 1.1 million service members have died in battle serving our nation. For a country that is only 250 years old, that’s a compelling number. But it’s a number that has no “connection” to today’s populace.

During World War II, about 12% of the U.S. population was part of the armed services. Everyone knew at least someone who wore the uniform. Today that number is less than 1%. Accordingly, there is a disconnect over what service means — and what it means to go into harm’s way and potentially pay the ultimate price for your country.

We have done exactly what Roosevelt did not want to happen by cheapening the holiday. We have clearly done a disservice to those 1.1 million men and women who died in conflicts to protect our freedom. It’s time for us to commemorate Memorial Day in the way Roosevelt encouraged us to do so.

Tom Jurkowsky is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who served on active duty for 31 years. He is the author of the book “The Secret Sauce for Organizational Success: Communications and Leadership on the Same Page.” He served on the Anne Arundel Community College faculty as an adjunct instructor, where he lectured on current affairs.

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on May 25, 2026

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General and NSL4A member, Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published May 22, 2026 on “Paul’s Substack - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, he gives an insightful analysis of President Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing May 13-15, 2026. The trip was Trump’s second meeting with Xi in China and the first of his second term. President Trump called the trip "incredible," but while it was big on pageantry, it fell short on concrete agreements, according to Tamara Keith and Jennifer Pak, writing for NPR. They said, “Trump hailed business deals for American companies and farmers while Chinese leader Xi Jinping touted a new era for the stability of China-U.S. relations.” Smith provides a detailed assessment of U.S.-China relations and the competition with the informal “CRINK” alliance — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. He calls for “solidifying the U.S. commitment to NATO and exploring expanded EU economic partnerships,” in order to improve our position vis a vis China.

Share

Chinese Chess

President Trump achieved significant gains during his visit to China, but he may have diminished U.S. global power in the process. A different approach to NATO and the EU could strengthen the US position in the chess game with China.

By Paul “Greg” Smith

President Trump’s recent visit to China has provided yet another American Rorschach test: While looking at the same inkblot, Trump supporters see a hopeful butterfly and Trump opponents see an ominous dragon. Perhaps the only thing on which both sides might agree is that the results were modest, neither “triumph” nor “disaster” are suitable descriptors.

“Constructive Strategic Stability”

President Trump put his best foot forward while in China. He prides himself on personal diplomacy and clearly made attempts to win over President Xi Jinping, heaping praise and flattery on him that included referring to Xi as “a great leader” and a “dear friend.” Although he didn’t appear to reciprocate the compliments, the Chinese president was generally cordial and agreed to a series of future meetings. Xi is scheduled to visit Washington in the fall.

Trump also secured Chinese pledges to purchase more U.S. agricultural exports and hundreds of Boeing aircraft. Maybe the most important achievement was the reestablishment of productive dialogue between China and the U.S. President Xi called for a new era of “Constructive Strategic Stability.” While the true meaning of this concept will only be defined by the future actions of each nation, it bodes well for peaceful relations. The last thing either nation needs right now is a war - kinetic, trade, or cold.

China is Not Equal to the US

Critics of President Trump acknowledge the trade deals and positive dialogue he achieved, but voice concern over his deferential demeanor as the leader of the world’s preeminent superpower during this visit. The President’s profuse praise seemed to elevate the status of Xi and China to peer status. China is well aware that its national power ranks far below that of the U.S., but it aspires to be an equal.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is about $21 trillion, while the U.S. GDP is over $31 trillion. China also faces a looming demographic crisis as its workforce numbers fail to keep pace with its aging population - the legacy of the foolhardy “One-Child Policy.” Although it may have a larger navy than the U.S., China ranks third in global military power (Russia is number two for now.) Furthermore, its military has been untested in combat since 1979 and Xi has created leadership upheaval by purging some of China’s most senior officers.

Many observers were concerned when Xi warned President Trump about delivering weapons to Taiwan. Certainly this was poor form for the host of a diplomatic visit to issue veiled threats to the guest national leader. However it was surprising that Trump accepted Xi’s remarks without any apparent response. President Trump’s later comments about reconsidering arms sales to Taiwan were even more troubling.

President Trump participated in a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, May 14, 2026 in Beijing. (White House photo)

Potential + Perception = Power

The essence of power is the combination of potential to deliver rewards and inflict punishment, coupled with perception of the intent and commitment to deliver both. The potential power of the U.S. is not in doubt. In fact, President Trump has demonstrated the potential military power of the U.S. by incisive and overwhelming combat operations in Venezuela and Iran. However he has diminished the perception that the US has the commitment or resolve to wield power when he failed to respond to China’s threats regarding arms sales to Taiwan. Coupled with the stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and the President’s vacillating rhetoric about annexing Canada, seizing Greenland, imposing global tariffs, and threats that Iran’s “civilization will die,” expressing doubt over the US commitment to Taiwan creates ambiguity and misperception. If China draws the wrong conclusions about America’s commitment and intent to leverage power in support of Taiwan, the consequences could be catastrophic.

An Unholy Union

Despite the optics and overall good feeling after President Trump’s visit, China is not our friend.

It is the principal partner in what I call the CRINK coalition. The unholy union of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea stands in opposition to the goals and democratic values of the US and its allies. Within the past year North Korea, Iran, and Russia have exchanged military aid to support combat operations in Ukraine and the Middle East. China has passively looked on from the sidelines while offering diplomatic (and perhaps cyber) support. Few were surprised when Putin was welcomed in Beijing soon after President Trump returned home. Undoubtedly the Russian president wanted to be certain of President Xi’s continued good graces and there’s little doubt that he was reassured.

I don’t need to recount the ways that Russia and Iran have acted against US allies and our interests, and there’s little mystery about North Korea’s foundational opposition to America. However I think we tend to gloss over China’s malign actions and clear intent to displace the U.S. as the world’s preeminent superpower. After all, US consumers buy Chinese products daily and some analysts say our economy would collapse without Chinese manufacturing and investment. Chinese young people study at U.S. universities in large numbers - nearly 266,000 were enrolled last year. Surprisingly there are over 2.4 million Chinese immigrants currently living in the US.

Wolf Warriors & Typhoons

But there’s a darker side to China’s relationship with the U.S. When I was within a month from military retirement, I became the target of a smear campaign launched by a Chinese citizen living in the US. This woman, whom I never met, wrote dozens of letters to my civilian employers and community associates. At first I tossed it off as foolish, but when I read some of the letters, I found that they contained personal information that only a sophisticated intelligence network could acquire. I suspect that she worked in collusion with the Chinese government. (U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division soon became involved and rectified the situation.)

So why would the Chinese waste their time attacking a U.S. Army officer who was about to retire? China appears to sponsor low-level disruptive activities intended to sow chaos within the US wherever possible. They entice Chinese citizens in the U.S. to become “Wolf Warriors” who report on disloyal Chinese students and immigrants, offer useful intelligence, and engage in other forms of disruption. It’s likely that the cooperation of “Wolf Warriors” is extorted by rewards or threats of reprisals against them or their family members in China. Just last week, a California mayor pled guilty to charges of acting as a foreign agent when she covertly spread Chinese propaganda on the internet.

The Chinese government manipulates its currency, provides protectionist measures for its industries, and freely pirates foreign intellectual property. It actively conducts espionage activities against technology companies and the U.S. government. For example, a Chinese-American man was convicted this month of running a “secret Chinese spy outpost” in New York City. China also engages in cyberwarfare against the U.S. and its allies.

In 2004 the Salt Typhoon hack infiltrated major U.S. telecommunications networks, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. The cyberattack also compromised a U.S. National Guard network and other allied intelligence networks. Investigation revealed that Salt Typhoon originated in China with likely government support. More recently Volt Typhoon cyberattacks infiltrated critical infrastructure networks in the U.S. and allied countries from 2021 to 2025. The Chinese government denies any association with Volt Typhoon, but investigators trace it to the People’s Liberation Army Cyberspace Force.

The Power of Alliance

China may rely on the support of the other nations in the CRINK coalition, but Iran and Russia are preoccupied and significantly weakened by the wars in which they’re engaged. Moreover the CRINK coalition is loosely bound by interests and ideology, not formal agreement.

On the other hand, all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commit to Article Five of the charter, which calls for mutual defense in the event that any member is attacked. NATO comprises 32 nations. Five of these nations rank in the top ten world military powers - United States, France, United Kingdom, Turkey, and Italy. (Two other top ten military powers are U.S. Pacific partners - South Korea and Japan.) Needless to say, the combined firepower of NATO far exceeds the punch that CRINK could bring to bear.

Unfortunately the Trump administration has taken a conflicted approach to NATO. President Trump can be credited with strengthening the potential military might of NATO by his insistence that member nations meet their financial obligations. However his rhetoric about U.S. commitment, once calling NATO “obsolete,” has weakened the perception that NATO would act with unified force in an Article Five attack. (And remember, potential + perception = power).

Although Trump has denigrated NATO member nations’ contributions to the war in Afghanistan, all NATO partners participated in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and many sustained significant casualties. ISAF proves that NATO members would commit troops and military resources even in a conflict outside the geographic limits of Europe and North America in support of Article Five.

Regrettably the Trump administration has also taken an oppositional - and at times provocative - posture toward the European Union (EU). But alignment with the EU could enhance U.S. economic power. With a GDP of over $19 trillion, the EU has considerable manufacturing, natural resource, and trade potential for U.S. partnerships. Although U.S. and EU interests may not always converge, partnering with the EU on initiatives of mutual benefit would serve as a U.S. economic “force multiplier.”

President Trump wisely avoided provocation and confrontation as he engaged in productive dialogue with President Xi. However, moving forward he would be well advised to reconsider solidifying the U.S. commitment to NATO and exploring expanded EU economic partnerships.

With the unified firepower and wealth of U.S. allies behind him, President Trump would be in a much stronger position to confront China’s malign activities, protect Taiwan, and check rising Chinese power on the global chessboard.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

By Dave Petri

Last week, Brigadier General Ed Burley, U.S. Army, Retired, sat through the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in Kelly v. Hegseth. I spoke with him afterward to get his firsthand account — not as a partisan observer, but as someone who brought an unusually relevant combination of experiences to the courtroom.

A Rare Combination of Military and Legal Experience

Burley is a retired Army Brigadier General, a former commander in Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs, a Ranger and Master Parachutist, and the first General Officer selected from the Army’s Psychological Operations Branch. He also served as a career prosecutor with the Department of Justice and worked on the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi regime leaders. In other words, he listened to the hearing as both a retired senior military officer and an experienced prosecutor.

His assessment was blunt: the government appeared unprepared for the level of scrutiny it received from the D.C. Circuit, and the panel seemed deeply troubled by the breadth of the government’s position.

Share

What the Judges Seemed to Be Testing

Burley emphasized that appellate hearings are not retrials. The central question is not whether the judges would have ruled the same way in the first instance, but whether the lower court made an error of law. In his view, Judge Florence Pan appeared focused on that narrow appellate question: whether the lower court erred and whether the government was improperly raising arguments on appeal that it had failed to preserve below.

That matters because, as Burley explained, arguments not raised at the trial court level are often treated as waived. His prediction was that Judge Pan may write a relatively narrow opinion finding no reversible error in the lower court’s ruling in Senator Kelly’s favor.

But the hearing was not only about appellate procedure.

Burley said each of the three judges seemed to approach the case from a different angle. Judge Pan focused on whether the lower court had committed legal error. Judge Karen Henderson appeared interested in whether the Department of Defense has authority to sanction or discipline retirees. Judge Cornelia Pillard, in Burley’s view, seemed more focused on the broader constitutional principle: whether retired service members retain full First Amendment rights after retirement.

The Government’s Argument Raised Alarm

The government’s argument, as Burley heard it, was that the Secretary of Defense — not the courts — has ultimate authority to determine what speech by military retirees is permissible. Senator Kelly’s team framed the issue differently: that the First Amendment protects free speech, subject only to narrow exceptions, and that Kelly’s statement was carefully limited to the lawful principle that service members must not follow illegal orders.

Burley found the government’s framing deeply troubling

“The government framed their argument that the Secretary of Defense has the ultimate authority, not courts, to determine what is allowed and not allowed speech by retirees,” he told me. By contrast, he said, Senator Kelly’s team answered the judges’ questions directly and grounded its argument in core First Amendment protections.

One of the most striking moments, according to Burley, came near the end of the government’s argument. The government attorney suggested that if retirees wanted to speak freely, they could resign their commissions and give up their pensions, medical care, and other earned benefits. Burley said he believed all three judges found that position “abhorrent” — a bridge too far in the government’s case.

Why This Case Reaches Beyond Senator Kelly

For Burley, the stakes extend well beyond Senator Kelly.

He sees the case as part of a broader attempt to chill public discussion by retired military officers about the legality and morality of military operations. He connected the issue directly to the law of war, the duty to refuse illegal orders, and the need for experienced military voices in public debate.

That perspective comes from command experience, not abstraction. Burley noted that service members who have had to make hard decisions in war — whether to attack a target, how to weigh civilian risk, how to treat surrendering individuals, or how to respond when people are stranded in the water — are precisely the people the public needs to hear from when the nation debates the conduct of war.

The Chilling Effect Is Real

His point was not that retired officers should be immune from all limits or professional obligations. It was that the government’s theory appeared to reach far beyond legitimate military discipline. If accepted, it could deter retired officers, senior NCOs, and national security professionals from offering informed public judgment on matters of war, legality, ethics, and constitutional governance.

Burley also described the chilling effect as real, not theoretical. He said he has personally been threatened by other former officers who claimed they would report him to the Department of Defense or seek to have his rank taken away over public comments far less controversial than Senator Kelly’s.

That is why, in his view, this case matters to ordinary Americans.

“The most fundamental right of all Americans,” he said, is the right to free speech. And when it comes to questions of war and lawful orders, the country proceeds “at our own peril” if those with the most relevant experience are afraid to speak.

What May Happen Next

Burley’s clearest takeaway from the courtroom was that the judges appeared surprised by the breadth of the government’s position and disturbed by its implications for the First Amendment. His forecast is that the D.C. Circuit is likely to uphold the lower court’s ruling for Senator Kelly, possibly on narrow procedural grounds. But he also believes the broader constitutional issue may not end there.

The question hanging over the case is larger than one senator, one hearing, or one administration: Can those who served a lifetime in uniform speak as citizens on matters of constitutional importance without being threatened with the loss of rank, retirement, or livelihood?

Retired Leaders Remain Citizens

For Burley, the answer should be clear. Retired military leaders do not stop being citizens when they leave active service. And when questions of lawful orders, military ethics, and the conduct of war are at stake, their voices are not a threat to democracy. They are essential to it.

Share

Dave Petri is Communications Director for National Security Leaders for America.

Brigadier General (Retired) Ed Burley was commissioned as a Regular Army Infantry Officer and has served as a Ranger and Jumpmaster. He served with distinction in the 82nd Airborne Division, the 29th Infantry Division (Light), the 2nd Psychological Operations Group, and the 352nd Civil Affairs Command, with overseas tours and deployments to Panama, Egypt, Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Afghanistan. He was the first General Officer selected from the Psychological Operations Branch. General Burley has a Doctorate in Law from the University of Virginia. He was a career prosecutor with the Department of Justice and served as Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C. He was assigned to the Iraq Regime Crime Liaison’s Office to assist with the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi Regime leaders.

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published April 29, 2026 on “Paul’s Substack - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, Smith, an instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College, says America must work to reduce the spate of politically motivate violence. He believes “if we don’t make substantive changes soon, America, we can expect more hatred, extremism, and, yes, more senseless violence ahead.” Smith offers four recommendations.

Share

America, We Need to Do Better

Four sensible recommendations to reduce politically motivated violence

By Paul “Greg” Smith

America, We Need to Do Better

We can’t continue like this….

April 25, 2026 - A gunman fired shots at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at which President Trump was a guest. This marked the third attempt to assassinate the President. One police officer was injured.

March 12, 2026 - A gunman opened fire in an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University, killing the instructor.

March 12, 2026 - An assailant rammed a truck and fired shots into a Jewish Temple in Michigan. Many law enforcement officers sustained injuries.

March 1, 2026 - A gunman fired into a crowded bar in Austin, Texas, killing three people and injuring fifteen others.

These are the most recent attacks conducted on US soil by “lone wolf” terrorists who were inspired by ideology or some form of political grievance.

In 2025, we witnessed the death of political activist Charlie Kirk, the assassination of Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman, and her husband, as well as the wounding of another state senator and his spouse. The Pennsylvania Governor’s residence was firebombed. A jihadist-inspired attacker struck New Orleans on New Years Day killing fourteen people. There were also attacks on Mormon and Catholic churches which took innocent lives. An Afghan refugee shot two National Guardsmen in DC. The perpetrators of these attacks and other extremist incidents were all motivated by a variety of ideologies or grievances.

The Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) reports that there were 21 terrorist plots or attacks directed against US government officials or institutions between 2016 and 2024, and most of these were motivated by partisan politics (Oct. 21, 2024). In the previous 20 years there were only two such incidents. A CSIS study from September 26, 2025 also states, “The number of left-wing terrorism incidents has risen in the last 10 years, though from very low levels, and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 3,445 US adults asking their opinions about politically motivated violence (Oct. 23, 2025). Eighty-five percent responded that they believed political violence was on the rise. Not surprisingly, nearly half felt that right-wing extremism was a major problem and an almost equal number felt that left-wing extremism was at fault. However, the rhetoric or behavior of political leaders was the factor most often reported as the reason for the increase.

Subscribe now

So, what can we do?

1. Call Out Hyperbole

My father-in-law, a seasoned newspaperman, would often hear a passionate story or complaint from one of his children. After patiently listening to the tale, he’d turn to other adults and say, “You must understand, my children are given to hyperbole.” I fear that many in elected office are also “given to hyperbole.”

Webster defines hyperbole as “extravagant exaggeration.” Perhaps today’s political era should be called, “The Age of Hyperbole” because it seems to be the go-to rhetorical device for political candidates and officials. Here are two infamous examples:

“...you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. …They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic “... (former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, September 9, 2016)

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections…They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.” (then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, November 13, 2023)

Hyperbole is highly effective for elevating emotion over reason. It’s a particularly persuasive motivator for an audience that isn’t interested in facts or critical thinking. Football coaches, hucksters, and preachers love it, but it has no place in serious discourse. Moreover, heated emotions fuel simmering grievances that can escalate into extremist violence.

America needs a neutral…or at least sane…voice to call out hyperbole, misinformation, and outright lies when elected officials and political candidates spew falsehoods. Perhaps the two political parties are too absorbed by their own electoral interests to be trusted to collaborate, but wouldn’t it be a valuable public service if they could jointly name, shame, and condemn provocative rhetoric?

Maybe the best we can hope for is that some civic-minded billionaire will fund an independent institution that will serve as an impartial umpire to inform voters when officials and candidates cross the line into fantasy, fabrication, and deception.

Then we must hope that voters will come to their senses and reject liars, charlatans, and phonies. By calling out misinformation and reckless hyperbole, maybe Americans will cast their ballots for those who responsibly speak the truth.

2. Rein in Social Media Algorithms

I recently went shopping online for a new airline carry on bag. Suddenly my social media, email, and web browser were inundated with advertisements for luggage, travel agents, airfare discounts, and all things related to air travel. Imagine if I had searched for “jihadist group contacts.” What dark connections would appear because of social media algorithms? (Please don’t try this!)

Algorithms are protected by Section 230 of the 1997 Communications Decency Act of 1997, which states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This law has generally shielded social media platforms from prosecution for content posted by users. However, the legislators who created this law almost twenty years ago could not have envisioned the persuasive power of algorithms.

A study of right-wing domestic terrorists at the USC Gould School of Law stated,“Algorithms create a particular danger in the radicalization of right-wing domestic terrorists on social media platforms.” Isolated extremists on both the right and left, and lone wolves in particular, become radicalized largely through social media or online messaging. The persistent drumbeat of extremist messages, delivered through social media algorithms, creates an echo chamber that distorts reality. Eventually this can exacerbate grievance, anger, and rage that too often erupts in violent action.

There are several current efforts to curb social media algorithms. The “Stop the Forced Feed” campaign advocates for policy change to enable users to control the content delivered by algorithms. “Fix Our Feeds” proposes similar user controls. Illinois Governor Pritzker has proposed state legislation to control algorithm content targeting minors. These initiatives are a good start, but they won’t fix the problem.

In March 2026, Meta and Google were held liable in civil court cases that decided their algorithms were responsible for mental health deterioration in several minors. The court awarded $6 million in damages. If this decision stands after appeal, there will be a barrage of civil suits. While these lawsuits could trigger reform, it will take years for the process to unfold.

Congress needs to act to curb algorithms. Section 230 provides important safeguards for free speech on social media platforms. But in their zeal to keep users glued to their screens, social media platforms have created algorithmic monsters that spawn disinformation and radicalization. This exacerbates mental illness and fuels violent extremism. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1997 must be amended or replaced by legislation that realistically addresses the challenges of 2026 and beyond.

3. Yes, Guns DO Kill People

A CSIS study from 2020 reported that firearms are the weapon of choice in the majority of fatal domestic terrorism attacks. In fact, all of the domestic terrorism incidents from the past two months involved guns.

Many of us wish the Framers had spent more time on the language of the Second Amendment, which is often misinterpreted to justify opinions about guns. Some say it has nothing to do with private gun ownership, it only establishes the legal standing for the National Guard. Some say it guarantees that every citizen can arm themselves to resist agents of the government without any limitations. I disagree.

States with the most restrictive gun control laws generally have the lowest rates of gun deaths. Firearms laws in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut are considered to be the most stringent. With the exception of Illinois, these states have the lowest rates of firearms fatalities in the US. Conversely, states with the most permissive gun laws - like Idaho, Mississippi, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Wyoming - have moderate to high levels of gun deaths. In fact, Mississippi has the highest rate of gun deaths in the US.

I’m a gun owner. I don’t want to abolish gun ownership, but I want reasonable legislation that keeps guns out of the hands of those who would use them illegally or irresponsibly. The debate over gun control rages back and forth. I have no wish to replicate it here. However, as a society we need to keep guns out of the hands of children, violent extremists, criminals, and those with serious medical or mental health challenges.

When I travel outside the US. I’m often surprised that people ask me about guns in the US. As conversations develop, they often express dismay that a nation as powerful as the US can’t or won’t do more to address gun violence. The issue of gun control is complicated by emotion, disinformation, and lobbyist cash. But at some point, Americans must wrestle with the deadly serious issue of firearms deaths in our nation.

4. Disagree, But Don’t Demonize

Political polarization is driving us apart as fellow Americans. We’ve forgotten the things we share in common. Sadly, it seems that only disasters and tragedies, like tornadoes, floods, or hurricanes, bring us together…and that unity is soon forgotten after the cleanup.

We often forget that most MAGA folks love their families and support local charities, or that many No Kings people are veterans and volunteers in their communities. Too often we’re eager to accuse those on the other side of evil intentions and dastardly deeds.

There are noble initiatives to increase dialogue between Americans with opposing views. Programs like the “Bridging Divides Initiative,” or “Dialogue Across Difference,” can serve as models to promote civility and understanding. I applaud these efforts, but I think most Americans aren’t quite ready to sit down with the other side in this overheated political climate.

Instead I believe we need a national information campaign that acknowledges our disagreements, but reminds us that people on the other side are human, with common needs, values, and dreams.

When we reject voices that label our fellow Americans as “vermin” or “deplorables,” when we silence social media echo chambers, when we enact sensible gun laws, and when we remind ourselves that people on the other side aren’t monsters because they disagree with us - then we may find that we quench the fire of violent extremism…and our nation will become a safer place.

But, if we don’t make substantive changes soon, America, we can expect more hatred, extremism, and, yes, more senseless violence ahead.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published April 29, 2026 on “Paul’s Substack - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, Smith, an instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College, questions the, as of this month, 58 attacks in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, on alleged narco-traffickers resulting in 190 deaths, including two killed September 2, 2026 in a deliberate second strike. Smith examines the official definitions of terrorism and concludes, “They may very well be criminals, but their activities do not meet the definitions of terrorism.” He goes on to express concern about the reputation of American military members, “the Good Guys,” in an era where kinetic strikes such as these call into question the legitimacy of the use of force.

Counterterrorism or Summary Executions

By Paul “Greg” Smith

Counterterrorism or Summary Executions?

On 5 May, 2026, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) released the following statement accompanied by a grainy video:

“On May 5, at the direction of the commander of U.S. Southern Command Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.

Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.

Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed.”

Since September 2025 SOUTHCOM has conducted lethal strikes against boats that are suspected of drug trafficking. The initial justification was that these boats contributed to the fentanyl infestation from Venezuela that was responsible for widespread US overdose deaths. However the Council on Foreign Relations reported, “.. fentanyl itself is not produced or widely consumed in the Latin American country.” Nevertheless it appears that many of these boats were illegally transporting cocaine.

On 2 September 2025 a US Navy vessel struck a boat suspected of drug trafficking. Forty-one minutes later the US vessel launched a second missile that killed two individuals clinging to the wreckage from the initial strike. The survivors reportedly were unarmed and defenseless. The Department of Defense deflected requests for the public release of video footage citing classification issues. Republican officials dismissed allegations of wrongdoing although there were many concerns that the “double-tap boat strike” was a summary execution that constituted a war crime.

The debate that raged over the September 2, 2026 two-stage boat strike raised further questions about the overall legality and morality of the SOUTHCOM boat strike campaign.

The most recent strike was the 58th action that SOUTHCOM has executed against a small boat in international waters. The three men killed this month brought the death toll to over 190.

Share

Troubling Questions

The brief statement about the 5 May 2026 SOUTHCOM boat strike raises more questions than it answers.

• To what Designated Terrorist Organization did these men belong?

• Is there any additional proof of criminality other than “the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes?”

• How did SOUTHCOM determine that the men were “engaged in narco-trafficking operations?”

• Were these men armed? Did they pose a threat to US forces?

SOUTHCOM has been less than transparent in explaining its standard operating procedures when approaching a suspected drug trafficking boat, which raises additional questions.

• What actions are taken by US vessels when a suspected drug trafficking boat is identified?

• Are messages broadcast or warning shots fired before lethal action is taken?

• Are legitimate attempts made to disable boats, apprehend suspects, and prevent loss of life?

Perhaps the most troubling question is whether or not the deceased individuals were terrorists, suspected criminals, or unfortunate fishermen.

Subscribe now

Terrorists or Criminals?

We’re unlikely to know if the individuals killed in the boat strikes were fishermen or narcotics traffickers, but the distinction between suspected criminals and terrorists is worth examination.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as:

“The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines terrorism as:

“a premeditated threat or act of violence, against persons, property, environmental, or economic targets, to induce fear or to intimidate, coerce or affect a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political, social, ideological, or religious objectives.”

While people targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific may be involved in narcotics trafficking, there is no indication that these people have any religious, ideological, political, or social motivation. They may very well be criminals, but their activities do not meet the definitions of terrorism.

As suspected criminals the boat occupants are subject to apprehension, detention, and adjudication. But summary execution as a legal penalty for suspected narcotics trafficking is inconsistent with US and international law. In fact, President Trump has issued pardons for at least five high profile individuals - Juan Hernandez, Garnett Smith, Larry Hoover, Ross Ulbricht, Michael Harris - all of whom were convicted of drug trafficking crimes by US courts and sentenced to imprisonment.

Haley Fuller, writing for Military.com, offers this additional analysis about the use of military force against individuals:

“A recurring issue in modern conflicts is the tendency of governments to apply labels such as “terrorist,” “criminal,” or “narco-terrorist” to justify the use of military force. International humanitarian law does not recognize these labels as substitutes for legal analysis. Targeting decisions must be based on objective facts about an individual’s function and conduct at the time of attack, not on political characterizations.”

What Happened to the Good Guys?

For many of us in the US military community, the extrajudicial killing of suspected criminals in the SOUTHCOM area of operations is deeply troubling.

Years ago I served as an advisor in the SOUTHCOM area of operations where I trained military forces in a nation that had recently emerged from a brutal dictatorship. Our team’s task was to develop a United Nations Peacekeeping company that would serve as a model for the modernization of the army. Before we addressed any tactical skills, our first block of instruction with the unit’s leaders was respect for human rights and rule of law. In fact, this was a topic to which we returned often as we developed the UN force. We were also keenly aware that we had to “practice what we preached” during our off-duty conduct while in the host nation.

When I addressed academic or civilian forums in the host nation I was often confronted by examples of past US assistance to repressive South American dictators during Operation Condor in the 1970s and 1980s. I responded by explaining that the US military is able to learn from past mistakes, make corrections, and set a new course. I don’t know how I could instruct and advise about respect for human rights and rule of law while defending the current SOUTHCOM boat strikes.

Several weeks ago I was cleaning out my barn. I uncovered an old hooded sweatshirt that used to be a favorite. Across the chest it said, “God Bless the Good Guys,” and underneath were the seals of the five armed services (there was no Space Force then.) I looked at that sweatshirt for a long time. Then I carefully hung it up and hoped that some day I could wear it again.

More on this story.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by NSL4A member Eugene R. Fidell, Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale and co-founder and President Emeritus of the National Institute of Military Justice. He published it in the Global Military Justice Reform blog on December 24, 2025, following White House confirmation that a second strike was ordered against an alleged narco-traffickers’ boat destroyed on September 2, 2025 off the coast of Venezuela, killing 11 people. It was the first of regular strikes against boats the Trump Administration labeled as threats to the United States. Members of Congress, UN officials and law experts questioned the legality of the strikes, some saying they were extrajudicial killings. The December second strike confirmation created controversy over release of the video showing the second strike on September 2nd. The video was said to show two survivors of the initial attack killed in a second strike 40 minutes later. The U.S. strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean on boats said to be carrying drugs continues. Military Times reported that as of May 5, 2026 the Trump Administration and the Pentagon have disclosed 56 strikes, killing at least 177 people. Here, Eugene Fidell walks us through the controversy in his call to “release the video.”

"I can't imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water," said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. "That is clearly unlawful."

Release the Video

Why won’t the Pentagon release the September 2nd second strike video?

by Eugene R. Fidell, Dec. 24, 2025

In Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes famously cracks the case by reasoning from “the curious incident” of the dog that didn’t bark in the night. While the Trump administration has done plenty of things in broad daylight that don’t require similar reasoning, there is a pattern of things that don’thappen, from which it is entirely fair to draw inferences. Examples include Mr. Trump’s long-promised tax returns (still being audited?), complete medical examination results, and the drip-drip saga of the Epstein files.

A current instance of things that should happen but don’t is the administration’s refusal to release the Department of Defense’s video of the second September 2 boat strike to either the entire Congress or the American public. Because the Niagara of troubling administration actions consumes so much of the available media bandwith and public attention, we must be sure not to lose sight of the missing video because it raises grave issues. It is all well and good that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 President Trump signed the other day incentivizes the Pentagon to make it available to Congress on pain of losing some travel funds, but that is not sufficient.

What do we know?

First, we have irreconcilable accounts of what the missing video shows, with the few Republican legislators who have been permitted to view it insisting that it’s nothing special, while the few Democratic legislators who have had precisely the same opportunity report that it is deeply troubling. Let’s assume that different observers can plausibly have such divergent reactions and not simply engaging in partisan posturing. In either case, the American public should be allowed to judge so grave a matter for itself.

The Defense Department says the video is top secret. But how can it be classified at any level and hence exempt from mandatory release under the Freedom of Information Act when videos of the main strike some 40 minutes earlier, as well as numerous other Caribbean and eastern Pacific boat-strike videos, have been made public? On its face, it is arbitrary and capricious not to treat like cases in like manner. Under section 552(a)(4)(F)(i) of FOIA, personnel who arbitrarily and capriciously withhold an agency record must be referred to the government’s Special Counsel for possible disciplinary action. (Don’t hold your breath.)

But might there be some difference that justifies the different treatment? Certainly, more people were killed in the initial strike, of which video has made public, whatever its classification level may have been. One would think that the video of the second strike would be a stronger case for release. Might it be that the second strike video is gorier than the first? The government hasn’t said that. But if that is the reason, the solution here would be simple: preface the video with a warning, as is so often done in contemporary television news reporting of violent or otherwise disturbing events.

There is of course a theoretical possibility that the second video is being withheld on the notion that it preserves evidence of a war crime, since the two victims were shipwrecked and, presenting no plausible threat, were entitled under international law to be rescued rather than killed. That would rest on a faulty premise since, contrary to the administration’s position, the United States is not at war with anyone in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific. That means the deaths must be examined under the human rights rubric of summary execution in the course of what must be treated as a de facto maritime law enforcement operation gone sideways. Viewed through that (proper) lens, the second-strike deaths, along with all of the others, would seem to fall, in the opinion of many observers, within the murder on the high seas provision of the federal criminal code and, for military personnel, Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In any prosecution, video of any of these strikes would be material evidence and there would be major battles over whether it could remain hidden from the public in a public trial. The Classified Information Procedures Act governs, and it is possible a way could be found around disclosure to the defense, although I am skeptical that a satisfactory alternative to disclosure can be fashioned – or should be. If the government stands its ground, the result may be dismissal of the case. For courts-martial, Military Rule of Evidence 505(d), which is part of the Manual for Courts-Martial, provides: “Trial counsel [the prosecuting judge advocate] should, when practicable, seek declassification of evidence that may be used at trial, consistent with the requirements of national security. A decision not to declassify evidence under this section is not subject to review by a military judge or upon appeal.”

Truth Social post, Donald J. Trump, Sep. 2, 2026, boat strike video

But there may never be a boat-strike prosecution (for example, if President Trump were to issue a blanket pardon). The video has already been the subject of a FOIA request. If it is withheld on the ground that it is classified, the classification is subject to review by a federal district judge, albeit under a highly deferential standard: the government need only show that its classification decision is logical or plausible. Still, the circumstances noted above suggest that such a case would not be a slam dunk for the government.

There is a further route to challenge the claimed classified status of the video. There is in the Executive Branch an agency called the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, located within the National Archives and Records Administration. It can overturn classification designations and has done so on occasion in the past. In a case in which I was counsel, it declassified part of an Army record that had been classified explicitly in order to save the service from embarrassment. The Executive Order on classified information states: “In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to: (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; [or] (2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.” Interestingly, under 32 C.F.R. § 2003.13(i), if the Appeals Panel orders a record declassified, the agency can appeal to the President himself, through the National Security Advisor. Conveniently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is currently both the National Security Advisor and head of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Which brings us to a final point. Although he denies having done so, President Trump has stated publicly that he would have “no problem” with releasing the video. He is the Commander in Chief. Pete Hegseth works for him, rather than the other way around. Who is in charge? Where does the buck actually stop?

More to the story

“Hegseth’s Deadly Fiasco: Eugene Fidell Explains,” The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin, Dec. 3, 2025

“Hegseth Invoked the ‘Fog of War’ in a Boat Strike. What Does That Mean?”, Francesca Regalado, NYTimes, Dec. 3, 2025

Truth Social Post of Donald J. Trump, Sep 02, 2025, with video of September 2, 2025 “kinetic strike” on a boat

“Pete Hegseth says he didn’t see survivors in the September boat strike because of ‘the fog of war’,” Katherine Doyle, NBC News, Dec. 2, 2025

“What the law says about killing survivors of a boat strike, according to experts,” PBS News, Dec. 1, 2025

“US strikes in Caribbean and Pacific breach international law, says UN rights chief,” UN News, Oct. 31, 2025

“A list of US military strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels,” Riley Ceder and Beth Sullivan, Military Times, updated May 5, 2026

Eugene R. Fidell is a visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School. In addition, he is of counsel at the Washington, D.C., firm Feldesman Leifer LLP, where his practice focuses on military law. Fidell is co-founder and President Emeritus of the National Institute of Military Justice. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard following graduation from Harvard Law School. His books include "Military Justice: Cases and Materials and Military Justice: A Very Short Introduction." He has edited the Global Military Justice Reform blog since 2014 and has taught at Yale, Harvard, NYU, and the University of Virginia.

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published April 21, 2026, on “Paul’s Substack. - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” Smith walks through the assemblage of losers in the America and Israel vs. Iran conflict, including the belligerents, neighbors and the wider global community, each in their own way through the expenditure of blood and treasure, collateral damage and the global energy crisis that has resulted. He turns to the nations currently benefiting: Russia and China. Smith says both are gaining strategic advantage and Russia is also seeing economic gains thanks to the conflict. While the outcome is still being sorted out, Smith says that no matter how long it takes the “smart money” would be on Russia and China to come out the war’s winners.

Share

Who Wins in the Iran War?

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Many Losers

Anyone who truly understands warfare knows that most belligerents involved in conflicts eventually become losers, even if they claim victory. Cases in point - The North gradually lost its gains over the South during Reconstruction after the US Civil War. The Versailles Treaty imposed by the triumphant World War I allies propelled the Nazi blitzkrieg twenty years later. Franco’s National Army won the Spanish Civil War, but today Spain is a secular democracy. The sun eventually set on the British Empire after it was victorious in World War II.

I won’t dwell on losses to the belligerents in the Iran War. But US prestige and the economy have certainly taken heavy hits, Iran’s infrastructure and defenses have been pummeled, and Israel has sustained infrastructure damage as well as growing diplomatic isolation. Most importantly, all combatant nations have suffered human casualties. The US and Israel may eventually achieve their goals, but time will tell if the benefits outweigh the costs.

The nations of the Middle East have been particularly hit hard. Nearly 2,000 Lebanese citizens have been killed in Israeli strikes against Hezbollah. US bases and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Jordan have been struck by Iranian drones and missiles. Perhaps the greatest damage has been done to the image of the Gulf States as safe, prosperous havens for international wealth and investments. Even limousines have had to dodge drones in the past month.

Other nations have been sucked into the vortex caused by the Iran War as fuel and other commodity prices have soared. Uncharacteristic civil unrest has broken out in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Norway over fuel prices. Shortages have led to a National Emergency declaration in the Philippines. Restrictions and rationing have been enacted by governments in Egypt, Slovenia, South Sudan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Larger nations with more resilient economies and fuel reserves may be forced to restrict domestic consumption if the Iran War continues.

But among all this doom and gloom, there are two nations who benefit from the global turbulence caused by the Iran War…

Russian Riches

“Russian exports of crude and refined (petroleum) products rose to $19 billion in March from $9.7 billion in February.” (New York Times, 14 April ‘26) Because of shipping disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, Russian oil exports also increased to India, Indonesia, and South Korea. This bonanza in oil profits and interest from new customers is largely due to a 30-day suspension of US sanctions. Sanctions were briefly reimposed, but again suspended to contain rising global oil prices. Regardless of US sanctions, Russia’s economy will continue to gain from inflated global oil prices. Ironically the US chose to reduce economic sanctions despite reports that Russia provided cyber hacking assistance to Iran and supplied targeting intelligence that may have led to US casualties. (Reuters, 7 April ‘26)

In addition to Russia’s enriched war chest, its assault against Ukraine is likely to face weakened defenses. Vast numbers of interceptor missiles have been expended in the Middle East to defend against Iranian missiles and drones and more are being rushed there. Because governments aren’t willing to discuss their missile stocks, it’s impossible to know exactly how badly supplies have been depleted. However it’s obvious that the US is in no position to provide interceptors to Ukraine and it has delayed shipments of these weapons to European allies. This will inevitably lead NATO partners to provide less of these critical weapons systems for the defense of Ukraine. It may not have immediate impact because of existing weapons stockpiles, but the need to supply interceptors to the Middle East will inevitably weaken Ukraine’s missile defenses - to Russia’s advantage.

Russia’s gains are strategic as well as economic. President Trump’s aggressive tariffs, ambitions to annex Greenland, support for far-right political parties, and provocative rhetoric have rattled European partners, most of whom are NATO members. Trump’s neglect to consult or inform NATO allies prior to the US/Israeli assault on Iran blindsided them as they scrambled to deal with the economic fallout. NATO indifference to the US request for naval assistance to open the Strait of Hormuz will further test US commitment to the alliance. It’s unlikely that NATO will fracture any time soon, but its cohesion and resolve have been diminished. The open question now is - Can the US be depended upon to respond to Article 5 which assures mutual defense? The element of doubt substantially weakens the alliance, which certainly benefits Russia’s expansionist goals in Europe.

China Watches From the Sidelines

In keeping with the philosophy of the legendary military philosopher, Sun Tzu, Napoleon allegedly said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” China appears to be following this strategic maxim as it sits on the sidelines of the Iran War. Leaders in Beijing are undoubtedly pleased as they watch the US become entangled in yet another Middle East muddle.

Ever since the US launched its barrage of tariffs on “Liberation Day,” April 5, 2025 world leaders have traveled to China seeking new trade deals. Senior representatives from Spain, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Canada, and even the EU have been warmly received in Beijing during the past few months. It’s no secret that China seeks to replace the US as the world’s preeminent superpower in Financial, Economic, and Development domains.

It has also been instructive to hear Beijing’s pacifist rhetoric and watch its “hands off” restraint during the Iran War. When it was revealed that China planned to ship weapons to Iran, Beijing quickly denied the reports and cancelled any plans for military aid to Iran. Recent US military actions in Iran and Venezuela, as well as provocative rhetoric about the acquisition of Greenland, have created a worldwide impression of American foreign policy as bellicose, aggressive, and unpredictable. China’s response to the evolving image of a belligerent US is to quietly flex its Diplomatic and Informational muscles by projecting a measured image of stability, reason, and rationality.

China’s international reputation will ultimately depend on its own behavior toward Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea neighbors, and its minority populations. However, its restraint during the Iran War has promoted its status as a responsible emerging superpower in contrast to the US, which appears feckless in its inability to bring the Iran War to a close. China may reap rewards in expanded trade deals as well as global prestige as a stable, reliable partner.

A Safe Bet

The outcome of the Iran War is uncertain. Perhaps the US, Israel, and Iran might reach a peace deal that brings stability to the Middle East. Perhaps hubris, distrust, and miscalculation will lead to years of smoldering hostilities in the region. But regardless of the trajectory of affairs, the smart money would be on China and Russia to end up as the only winners in the Iran War.

Until next time - be safe!

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.

This article was written by former U.S. Army Brigadier General Greg Smith, who served 35 years in uniform. It was published April 3, 2026 on “Paul’s Substack. - Dispatches from a Dangerous World.” In it, Smith, an instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College assigns letter grades to the various elements of American power deployed in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran – military, intelligence, diplomacy, financial, information, economic, legal, development, and cyber. Smith’s assessments, developed in early April, help to understand America’s strengths and weaknesses in the conflict that has entered its third month.

A Report Card on U.S. National Power in the Iran War

By Paul “Greg” Smith

We often discuss elements of national power in my Counterterrorism Strategy course. The analysis of how nations assert power over others and how nations defend themselves has recently evolved. Years ago we analyzed national power through four dimensions - Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic - or the DIME paradigm. Perhaps a more precise construct involves eight elements - or the MIDFIELD paradigm. (Although I will argue that we should also consider a “C” element.) Using these eight factors as a yardstick, we can better evaluate and understand US successes and shortfalls in the war on Iran. Here are my grades for US power:

Military - A-

The US military has executed a brilliant operation in quickly establishing air supremacy, which enables the force to strike targets at will. The US assault has interdicted Iranian command and control, destroyed the air force, decimated the navy, and reduced missile strike capability. Nuclear weapons development has been suppressed, if not eliminated. Although any injury or loss of life is tragic, US casualties have been limited. Collateral damage has also been limited, but the missile strike early in the war on the school was a serious error. In short, the US military has accomplished everything with which it has been tasked by the political leadership.

Intelligence - A

This element is highly shrouded in secrecy, but the elimination of scores of Iranian leaders indicate that US and Israeli intelligence operators have deep sources of human (HUMINT) and signals (SIGINT) information. Military planners strike targets with a level of precision that we have never seen in previous operations. This is indicative of precise, timely intelligence.

Diplomacy - C

To preserve the advantage of surprise, the White House chose not to inform allied nations prior to the initial strikes on Iran. This has resulted in a “not our war” response to President Trump’s appeal for assistance from NATO partners. The decision to keep NATO in the dark, but then request assistance, was a diplomatic blunder that may have consequences beyond the Iran war. On the positive side, the US/Israeli coalition is rock solid showing no cracks. Also, all Middle East partner nations (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, etc.) continue to voice condemnation of Iran and allow US military basing and access to their territories.

Financial - C

The rise and fall of US and global stock markets have been breathtaking and puzzling. Increased, fluctuating oil prices have created uncertainty, which is always bad for investment. The US bond market (which I don’t fully understand) appears to be showing signs of stress. Nevertheless, we aren’t seeing a stock market crash or financial panic, as some economists predicted. However, it’s also not clear if rising oil prices and restricted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz will have lasting impact or not.

Information - D

President Trump’s changing strategic objectives and timelines have baffled US voters, global partners, and financial markets. While “strategic ambiguity” may keep enemies off balance, it has the drawback of confusing the US public and allies. Furthermore it may create doubt about the administration’s intent, anticipation of consequences, or planning. Trump’s reluctance to address the nation during a time of war has created a vacuum in which other voices have made misstatements. For instance, Secretary Rubio at one point suggested that Israel had drawn the US into the war, which he needed to swiftly correct. However the seed of doubt had been planted. There have been only six Pentagon briefings, and two weeks elapsed before the most recent was delivered. During these briefings, General Caine has delivered concise, factual information that projects professionalism and confidence. Nevertheless the administration’s poor performance in the use of Information power has resulted in 60% of the US public indicating disapproval of the war. (I intend to offer future posts about Information power in the Iran war.)

Economic - C

The rising costs of gasoline, natural gas, jet fuel, and diesel which have been caused by the war in Iran pose a significant challenge for the global economy. Whether or not this challenge is catastrophic or prolonged remains to be seen. In the short term, increased fuel costs will inevitably create some hardship for US consumers with rising prices and climbing inflation rates. President Trump confidently predicts that fuel costs will recede once hostilities cease, but not all economists agree with him. However the stock market remains strong, jobs numbers are good, and the US economy appears healthy, despite the spike in oil prices. Time will tell about the resilience of the global economy.

The war in Iran is estimated to cost $1 billion per day, which will inevitably add to the US deficit. Right now the US industrial base is capable of supplying the munitions needed to sustain the war. But are weapons stocks so depleted that the US will be unable to respond to another global crisis? Can the US replenish the munitions expended in Iran to maintain adequate defense posture?

Legal - D

Neither the US nor Israel support the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, but the actions of each nation could create significant future sanctions from that body. The preemptive “war of choice” that the two nations launched against Iran, with whom the US was in active negotiations, may not stand up under legal scrutiny. This is further complicated by the tacit admission that Iran posed no imminent threat to the US. Furthermore, the assassination of over forty Iranian leaders, many of whom were noncombatants, violates International Humanitarian Law. President Trump’s recent statements about destroying Iran’s infrastructure “back to the stone ages” may well be used as evidence against him in future ICC proceedings. Overall, warlike rhetoric from the US leadership creates legal peril of future sanctions in the ICC or United Nations.

However the US military appears to be using due diligence in adhering to the laws of war for selecting targets and limiting collateral damage.

Development - ?

It appears that little thought has been given to the condition of Iran after the cessation of hostilities. Every bomb that destroys infrastructure will have its cost in redevelopment to repair the damage. Failure to rebuild a new Iran and invest in its stability will inevitably create another failed state that will become a breeding ground for terrorism, civil war, and chaos. Who will pay the cost to redevelop Iran?

Cyber - B+

….This is the “C” element I would add to the MIDFIELD construct

It’s difficult to evaluate US and Israeli cyber operations because of the secrecy involved. But it appears that the coalition has effectively crippled Iran’s air defenses, as well as its command, control, and communication functions. I suspect that this has been achieved through jamming and offensive hacking. Iran or its sympathizers have achieved limited success in hacking and disrupting some official and unofficial computer systems (like the FBI Director’s email). Cyberwarfare is a critical dimension because of the vulnerability of communications, data, and infrastructure upon which the daily activities of society depend.

I’ve attempted to be succinct and nonpartisan in my report card on US national power in the war on Iran. As we all know, events in the region develop and shift hourly - I may attempt another report card if the grades change significantly.

Paul “Greg” Smith. Former US Army Brigadier General with 35 years in uniform. Commanded at every level below division, including military JTF command during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Current instructor in Counterterrorism Strategy at Nichols College. Paul’s Substack

Voices of Experience offers timely analysis and seasoned insight from national security leaders committed to defending American democracy. Join us for clarity, expertise, and guidance through today’s complex national and global challenges. National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is a nonpartisan coalition of over 1,400 former senior military, diplomatic, and national security officials committed to upholding democratic principles and protecting the integrity of U.S. national security. Protecting the Constitution remains the mission, preserving America’s promise for future generations.