# Debating the Meaning of Military Victory

An episode of [Net Assessment](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1437812041), 22 Oct 2026, 57 min.

Audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/netassessment/Net_Assessment_-_22_October_2026_v1.mp3?dest-id=808287

On this episode, Chris, Melanie, and Zack consider the question of military victory. Is there such a thing? Is military victory achievable for either Russia or Ukraine? And if so, at what cost? And will we ever see a war that ends in unconditional surrender? Grievances for President Trump's plan to end the war in Ukraine by siding with China and Russia; the Saudi's dissembling on the threats to the Kingdom; and the latest stories of corruption within the Trump administration. Attas to the Ukrainians who rescued a wounded soldier by drone, to Anthony Scaramucci for lasting twice as long in his job as Katie Zacharia, and to Stimson's Evan Cooper – who is getting married! Congrats to Evan and Grace. Show Links: • Stephen Biddle, Sam Winter-Levy, and Yuri Zhukov, "The Myth of Military Victory: The Dangerous Idea Driving Today's Wars of Choice," Foreign Affairs, October 6, 2026. • Ahmed Al Omran, Nicolas Parasie, and Andrew England "Saudi Arabia to postpone 'Davos in the desert' after Houthi attacks," Financial Times, October 19, 2026. • The Iran War, Eight Months On: Reassessing Costs, Consequences, and US Interests, Stimson Center, November 5, 2026. • Henry Stimson Diary August 9-10, 1945, National Security Archive. • Drone rescuing Ukrainian soldier, X post, October 19, 2026. • Dana Mattioli, Josh Dawsey, Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw, and Vera Bergengruen, Inside Kimberly Guilfoyle's Last Days as Ambassador to Greece, Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2026.

## Transcript

[0:08] Melanie Marlowe: Hello, and welcome to Net Assessment, where we debate the hard choices facing America's national security and foreign policy communities. Today we're going to talk about
[0:17] the idea of military victory. Is there such a thing as military victory? Is military victory achievable for either Russia or Ukraine, and, if so, at what cost? And will we ever see a war
[0:26] that ends in unconditional surrender? I'm Melanie Marlowe of CSIS, here with Chris Preble of the Stimson Center, and Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute. How are you?
[0:36] Chris Preble: Hello again.
[0:38] Melanie Marlowe: Where are you?
[0:40] Zack Cooper: Chris looks like he's in his office.
[0:42] Chris Preble: I'm in my office, which is boring. Zack, where are you?
[0:44] Melanie Marlowe: Okay, Zack, where are you? That's what everybody really wants to know.
[0:48] Zack Cooper: I'm in New Zealand. It's beautiful here.
[0:50] Chris Preble: I'm sure it is.
[0:52] Zack Cooper: Great weather. It's springtime. Can't complain.
[0:55] Melanie Marlowe: Okay.
[0:56] Chris Preble: Yes, I'm jealous. So, yes, one of these days I will go to New Zealand.
[1:01] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah. When we're on our Australia, India, New Zealand Net Assessment tour, right?
[1:06] Chris Preble: That's right.
[1:08] Zack Cooper: When I was on the airplane yesterday transiting from Auckland to Wellington, the flight attendant got on and said, "We have some important news. There's an American who is
[1:21] transferring citizenship from the United States to New Zealand after 20 years, and can you please give them all a round of applause?" And I was like, "Wow, this is really on the nose."
[1:35] For the record, it was not me. But wow.
[1:38] Melanie Marlowe: Shame.
[1:39] Zack Cooper: Everyone else clapped, and I was just sitting there quietly.
[1:44] Chris Preble: Sheepishly, quietly.
[1:46] Zack Cooper: Yeah.
[1:47] Melanie Marlowe: Oh my gosh. Chris, what are you up to besides feeling great about the Vikings?
[1:51] Chris Preble: I'm feeling great about the Vikings. I'm feeling great about the Tennessee Volunteers, who beat up on the Alabama Crimson Tide, which was awesome. There was cigar smoke
[2:01] wafting above Neyland Stadium, which was a great sight to behold. I was jealous of the people that I knew who were actually in the stadium that night. It was amazing. And I got to say,
[2:12] everybody, like, the experience last weekend in Dallas for the Red River Rivalry was just awesome. Absolutely over the top. I had the best time. It was great. Great game. Texas came in
[2:23] undefeated, number one team in the country. They left with their tail between their legs, and then got beaten this past weekend. So, the Longhorns are horns down, as they say. Just a
[2:34] really great experience. And the Texas State Fair, which does not measure up to the Minnesota State Fair, I have to say, the Minnesota State Fair is better, but the environment around the
[2:45] Cotton Bowl for the day of the game was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. Just a giant tailgate with Texas fans mingling with Oklahoma fans. Took some pictures. It was really
[2:56] an awesome experience, had a great time.
[2:59] Melanie Marlowe: Oh, that is awesome. You should post some of those so everybody can see what a great time you had. Well, I made it through AUSA. I actually didn't spend very much time at
[3:08] AUSA because there were a lot of other side meetings and things going on. General Brunson was at CSIS for a public event one day, and then for a private roundtable. Colleagues from both of
[3:18] your think tanks were at that, and that was really fun and very interesting. I did run into a lot of fans. I want to say hi to Elizabeth. I had a chance to meet Keri, who is also a fan and
[3:28] someone that we all should know. And then I was on a panel, and I had, kind of, a funny story. Our listeners may know Sean Naylor, he was standing around by my panel right before it
[3:37] started, and I was talking to him, and we were reliving the days of the global war on terror and when I used to run into him at war conferences talking about droning civilians and such
[3:47] that was in the news during the Obama years. So, then I get up on my panel, they ask me a question about Ukraine, but of course, I'm thinking about the war on terror, and I say
[3:56] Afghanistan.
[3:57] Zack Cooper: Oh, no.
[3:58] Chris Preble: They all just blend together. It's just all just one...
[4:01] Melanie Marlowe: I did. Then I just started listing things off. But you know, that was the day the poor new White House press secretary was introduced to the world, and I thought, "Nobody
[4:10] even cares what I said because everybody wants to know what catastrophe that was." And there was really no comparison, so that was, kind of, funny.
[4:18] Chris Preble: Hey, you mentioned giving a shout-out. I want to give a shout-out. A couple weeks ago, I met Oren, a huge fan of the show. I met him when I was giving a talk at GW, and
[4:27] so I wanted to give a shout-out to Oren. I forgot last time, so yes, shout-out to longtime fan Oren, along with all of our other fans out there. Hey, and by the way, since we're all talking
[4:37] about our fans, who are amazing, we would love it, if you love the show as much as we love all of you, we would love it if you would write a quick review on your listening platform of
[4:47] choice. We don't even care which one. Say why you like listening to the show. Tell your friends. That's how we reach a new audience. And again, so grateful for folks who have
[4:56] listened to us now for, how many years is it now, Melanie? Eight?
[5:00] Melanie Marlowe: Eight. Eight years.
[5:01] Chris Preble: Gosh, that does just fly. Time flies.
[5:05] Melanie Marlowe: It does, kind of, fly.
[5:07] Zack Cooper: And if you don't like the show, you can just text Chris Preble at 555...
[5:11] Chris Preble: Zack...
[5:13] Melanie Marlowe: All your complaints.
[5:14] Chris Preble: All complaints. Come to me, all the praise goes to Zack and Melanie, as it should be.
[5:21] Melanie Marlowe: Yes. Okay, well, Chris, you have the show. What are we talking about?
[5:26] Chris Preble: Well, I mean, I think before we get to what we were going to talk about, I thought we were going to talk a little bit about the latest happenings with respect to Ukraine
[5:36] and Russia, which has gotten a lot of attention over the last week or so. There's some relationship to the article under consideration. But before we get to that, I'm just, sort of,
[5:47] curious to hear where you two stand on the suspension of the tariffs and the diesel deal and other things surrounding President Trump, Russia, and Ukraine.
[5:57] Zack Cooper: Let's be clear. This is just disgraceful, and it's not the first time I've said that about something that's happened in this administration. But the fact that the United
[6:07] States is now aligning itself with the aggressor in the Ukraine conflict is unbelievable. Well, I shouldn't say unbelievable because it is believable.
[6:17] Chris Preble: Right. It's not unbelievable. It's quite believable, actually.
[6:20] Melanie Marlowe: It's not unbelievable to us.
[6:22] Zack Cooper: I want to say it's un-American. And we're watching the president put pressure on Zelenskyy to step down because he hasn't had elections recently enough. What about Vladimir
[6:34] Putin? What about a couple of words about the fake elections Vladimir Putin has? Watching the president cut back Starshield access, again, we are essentially aiding the Russian war effort
[6:46] now. And having just been around the world and listened to lots of countries that were upset that we were threatening to put tariffs or sanctions on them for buying Russian energy, to be
[6:59] doing the same ourselves, it's not unbelievable. It's just disgraceful.
[7:04] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah. I have spent a lot of time in Ubers the last week, so I had lots of time to scroll and send off some intemperate tweets. But you know what? It's so dishonorable.
[7:14] It is a betrayal, and by that I don't mean we have to send all our Patriots to Ukraine, and we have to make sure they recover every last inch. I don't mean any of that. As we're going to
[7:25] talk about, in my view, there will likely be some negotiated settlement when this ends, and Ukraine's probably not going to get everything that I want it to get and all of that. But this
[7:36] is absolutely appalling. It is embarrassing. It's disgusting. Four Republican members of Congress signed on to a letter with Democrats about all of this. Well, where's all the rest of
[7:46] them? You know? Where are the rest of the members of Congress? I know some of them have said things, and you don't have to sign a letter necessarily to register your discontent, and
[7:57] people say that there's going to be hearings, and I believe that there will be hearings even with, you know, Republicans getting upset about this and all of that. But there's very few
[8:07] things that I say are un-American. I think this is un-American, too. That hadn't actually crossed my mind, but I'm on board with that. This is literally siding with the aggressor, who,
[8:18] by the way, you know, in Trump I, they spent all their time making fun of Angela Merkel, and I was on board with it. It was one of the things I agreed with them on, about getting off
[8:29] Russian gas. And now we're pressuring Russia to get back on European gas because that's a good thing for Russia, and this is going to help them rebuild. You know, this is sounding like AfD,
[8:40] where they want repayment for all the weapons that Germany sent to Ukraine. I mean, like, I literally am waiting for that to be the next thing, the way that the president talks about
[8:50] this. I would totally not be surprised. And it's really disgraceful, the people who cheered along and said, "Oh, well, Donald Trump sent Javelins." He sent 360 Javelins over a period of
[9:01] two years with the requirement that they be stored in the west part of the country because he didn't want to be provocative either. And was that a step up, in my view? I know it was a step
[9:12] down for other people. Was that a step up from what the Obama administration had done and how they had talked about Ukraine? Yes. But Donald Trump was never going to be the savior of
[9:22] Ukraine, and anyone who listened to anything that he said from his first term to the invasion to when he took office, saying that this was going to end in 24 hours, if you thought it was
[9:33] because he was going to put any pressure on Russia, you were wrong. And you were especially wrong after that first trip of, you know, I think it was Waltz and maybe Witkoff and Rubio who
[9:44] went to the Middle East to do the Russian negotiations, and they started talking just like this, "We can't wait for this to be over," not so everything will be fine with Ukraine, but so
[9:55] they could do deals with Russia, and we could bring Russia back into the community of nations. And I can go on about this all day, inviting him to the G20. And then people saying, "Well,
[10:05] don't worry, it's not going to happen." This next Yalta Conference with Xi and Putin and Trump, leaving out Ukraine, of course. Like, "Don't worry, Trump's not going to go." The point
[10:16] is, these people are making overtures like it would be a real thing, that are, you know, hanging that out there because that is how the United States is acting now. It's disgusting.
[10:27] Chris Preble: I'm not surprised by any of this, and as you both said, this is very consistent with President Trump's approach to policy and governing since his first term, but especially
[10:38] so in the second term. He has decided that ending the war, and regardless of the circumstances, is his top priority, and he sees the Ukrainians as the primary impediment to
[10:48] ending the war, and he's putting pressure on the Ukrainians. The other thing we have to remember, everybody, is that the so-called perfect call involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the
[10:59] first administration certainly did not position Zelenskyy very well in Trump's eyes, and I've always believed that that was in the back of Trump's mind from, you know, going back to the
[11:11] first term. You know, all he wanted was a favor from Zelenskyy, that Zelenskyy would investigate Biden, Hunter Biden, and other things like that, and Zelenskyy refused. So, this
[11:21] is what happens when you have personalistic individuals governing policy, and when you have Congress, you know, let's be clear, he is exercising the authority in the legislation that
[11:33] allows the President of the United States to suspend the law, and if that clause was not in the law, Donald Trump would not have supported its passage, and if Donald Trump had not
[11:43] supported its passage, it would not have passed. That's where things stand, is the Republican Party is taking its cues from Donald Trump for the most part, and so he exercised his
[11:54] authority within the law, and that's what many of us who are concerned about granting even more powers to the President with respect to tariffs and trade restrictions, this is how it
[12:05] looks when the President has that kind of control.
[12:09] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah. And where are the people who six weeks ago were really verbally making their displeasure with Democrats known because they were holding up the bill because they were
[12:18] worried about these provisions? And some Republicans, moderate Republicans, they were also worried about this authority and how this President would use it, and we talked about this
[12:28] before. It's not like this is some normal President that you could go give this authority to and know that... Or think that at least, they wouldn't use it in a totally detrimental way.
[12:38] And so, where are they? They're not saying anything about this now. No big deal, I guess. But you know what else is really appalling to me? Rubio. Rubio that everybody says is supposed to
[12:48] be better than all of this, getting like, "I don't know anything. I'm just a national security advisor and the Secretary of State who would possibly forward me the email." Or Chris Wright
[12:58] getting on there yesterday, "This is going to benefit the American people." You know what? This is not your average Trump embarrassment or Trump humiliation or, you know, Trump "I have
[13:07] to suck up to the leader." This is history book-level betrayal where their names are going to be by this, and I mean, I'm never going to forget, and the Melephant never forgets. And Scott
[13:17] Bessent going on the Sunday shows yesterday and doing the same thing. This is not your average, you know, "the Fed should change interest rates to make Donald Trump happy." This is
[13:27] disgusting.
[13:28] Chris Preble: All right.
[13:29] Melanie Marlowe: Well, with that, what are you guys up to the rest of... No, I'm kidding.
[13:33] Chris Preble: Now, let's talk about the original subject of this, which we settled on some time ago actually, because not long after we recorded our last show, I came across this
[13:44] article, "The Myth of Military Victory: The Dangerous Idea Driving Today's Wars of Choice" by Stephen Biddle, Sam Winter-Levy, and Yuri Zhukov, in Foreign Affairs. It was published on
[13:56] October 6th, so like I said, it was published just after we recorded our last episode, and I really like this article. It speaks to something that I've been puzzling over for some time,
[14:09] and I think that what they really fix on are the misconceptions, the myths, pertaining to the utility of force. The authors write, "Victory means achieving the political aims for which one
[14:21] went to war, but military victory implies more. The adjective signals that those aims are secured through combat rather than at the bargaining table." Later they write, "The notion of
[14:33] military victory is a dangerous myth. All modern wars end in negotiated settlements. To end a war, both sides must choose to stop fighting, and those choices always require non-trivial
[14:46] bargaining." And then they conclude this portion of the article, "Misunderstanding the relationship between bargaining and fighting produces a systematic failure to integrate
[14:57] negotiating strategy with campaign planning. As long as policymakers do not grasp that wars end only when both sides are ready to lay down their arms, they will continue to be frustrated
[15:10] by the inability of military force to achieve their political goals." Unquote. So, for starters, what did you two think? What were your first impressions on reading this article,
[15:21] "The Myth of Military Victory"?
[15:24] Melanie Marlowe: I liked it. I thought it was a really good article. I mean, I have some quibbles around the edges, but I didn't have any real objections to anything that I read. I
[15:34] thought it was well-written. It's not very long. For people that are interested in this topic, go grab it. You can read it in 30 minutes or so, as long as you're not doing a podcast on it,
[15:44] then you have to read it again and more closely. But it's not a heavy lift, and I think that it will make sense to people. I hope that it spurs some discussion or some thought among
[15:54] people who generally think about what they want their objectives in war to be, but don't really sit down and think about concretely, how is this going to end? Or how could it end? Or
[16:04] do the advantages that I think that I have right now going into this, are they really the advantages I think? How long will those endure? What will undermine what I think are my
[16:14] objectives, and what might I be willing to do if that's the case? So, I thought it was a great piece. Good job, Chris.
[16:21] Chris Preble: Well, credit to the authors. Zack?
[16:23] Zack Cooper: Yeah, I liked it, too. And look, it's not like a groundbreaking piece, but I think the timing of the piece is good. It may be useful in classes. Like, I always teach a
[16:36] class on brute force versus coercion, in which I ask students to come up with a conflict which was purely brute force. It is really hard, right? Almost every conflict has coercion deeply
[16:49] embedded in it in a way that I think students often don't realize. I do have two reflections on this piece which might be fodder for discussion. One is, interestingly, the Trump
[17:02] administration has not always forgotten this lesson. So, I can think of several operations that the President authorized which had much more limited objectives, which seem to have been
[17:16] obtained. And I'm not suggesting that that means that this was the right operation or the wrong operation, but take the initial strikes against Iran, not this year, but last year,
[17:29] pretty limited aims. They did the operation, and then they stopped. And that in some senses wasn't military victory, but they achieved the military objective they had, which they had
[17:42] carefully circumscribed. I think the problem is that after that, and then Venezuela, where I think they also had a pretty straightforward objective, right? Seize Maduro, depose the
[17:55] government, put somebody else new in, I think they got overconfident. And we've talked about this before, but I think one of the lessons in this piece is that many countries that are very
[18:09] strong, especially countries that have experienced recent conflict victories, get deeply overconfident, right? And as a result, their war aims are so massive and unrealizable that
[18:22] they essentially are not things that you could do using pure military force at all. And this is, I think, the story of what has happened to the Trump administration in the current Iran
[18:35] war.
[18:36] Chris Preble: I'm hoping that they're not still as overconfident as they were in February of 2026, but we'll see.
[18:42] Zack Cooper: Right.
[18:43] Melanie Marlowe: The price of entry into conflict is so much lower than it used to be. And again, with persistence and endurance, groups can achieve some of their goals, and their goals
[18:53] don't have to be as big and ambitious as those of the United States or Russia or China might be. And when you look at conflict as a spectrum, you know, the engagements, battles, war, and
[19:03] so on, different adversaries are going to view success in different ways, even according to what they have. So, it's very conditional, and I don't mean in the sense of unconditional
[19:13] surrender like we were talking about. But understanding the perspective of where your adversary is coming from and what they're willing to accept or what they're not willing to
[19:23] accept, I'm not sure that we've been thinking about that very clearly in the last long while.
[19:29] Chris Preble: It's interesting you say that, Melanie, because how long have Americans thought this way? And again, we're focusing mostly here on the United States because military victory
[19:44] implies that the adversary's capability to resist has been eliminated, that they are devoid of agency, and anything short of that is a negotiation.
[19:56] Melanie Marlowe: You know, it talks... I think the title is Wars of Choice. And to me, the word that kept coming back, you know, choice, but agency.
[20:03] Chris Preble: Correct.
[20:03] Melanie Marlowe: That was on every page. I was thinking, "This is about agency and what the adversaries think that they should do or could do, what they think is in their interest
[20:14] anymore." But you know, you look at the end of World War II, and you look at that surrender, and then totally reasonable then for the United States, I mean, people have their views on it,
[20:26] to think that they could fight in Korea and win, but then China gets in, and things change. Or you go to Vietnam, and you think that you might have somewhat limited goals, but it just
[20:38] becomes really hard because the persistence on the other side is unyielding. And we've had a series of these conflicts where I don't know if we're thinking about how this is happening.
[20:51] Chris Preble: Well, I was really struck by their discussion. They had a pretty lengthy discussion about the terms of surrender for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And I think that
[21:02] one of the problems for Americans, you know, we're coming up on the 25th anniversary, not just of 9/11, but also of Band of Brothers, and I listened to a recent podcast about Saving Private
[21:14] Ryan. And there is a certain nostalgia that has gripped this generation, thinking back to World War II and to see, for completely understandable reasons, why World War II is seen as an
[21:26] unadulterated American victory and good versus evil. Of course, this is bracketing the many millions of Soviets that were killed in the process. But I really like their discussion of
[21:37] both the terms of surrender for the Germans and the terms of surrender that were spelled out for Japan, because in both instances, there was a serious consideration of holding out for
[21:49] unconditional surrender. And in both instances, very deliberately, the Roosevelt administration, and then the Truman administration, concluded that there would not be an
[22:00] insistence on unconditional surrender, that in fact both parties agreed to surrender with conditions, and that both Germany and Japan retained certain things that would not have
[22:11] prevailed in the case of an unconditional surrender. They talk a lot about the Morgenthau Plan with respect to the Germans. They talk about the retention of the Emperor with respect to
[22:23] Japan. I found that entire discussion to be really fascinating because I like to say that our memory of World War II is, sort of, like, this is why a little bit of history can be a
[22:35] dangerous thing, because we're not thinking clearly about all the details. But I'm, sort of, curious about where you two come down on this question about the importance of the
[22:46] interpretation of World War II's end, and the recognition that these were negotiated settlements, not military victories.
[22:54] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, I thought this was really interesting, and I'm sorry that I have been traveling because I would have loved to have pulled out Twilight of the Gods and read some of
[23:03] that to prep for this. But I was able to find some of the material that I was looking for online, and I would highly recommend people go, I think it's like the archives or somewhere,
[23:12] but you can Google for Secretary Stimson's diary for, I believe it's August ninth and 10th, and you get a really good sense, very interesting sense, of what is going on. And I just want
[23:22] to convey a little bit of that. And somewhere else, allegedly, Truman had said that they had told Hirohito he would not be tried as a war criminal, he'd be retained as Emperor. And some
[23:31] of the reasons for this, because as Chris said, like there was a lot of differing views on this, the Secretary of State was like, "Well, maybe we should impose a constitution and have
[23:41] free speech," right? So, blah, blah, blah, do all of that. But you know, we saw later on in this century it wasn't going to work on people. But some of the interesting points were like
[23:50] the clock was ticking, right? More Americans in unimaginable numbers were likely to get killed, hundreds of thousands possibly, if they were going to do this invasion. And then
[23:59] another point of this was the Russians were wanting to move in more to this region, and they wanted to be part of the post-war settlement. And so, they were extremely concerned about
[24:08] that. And then, looking at Hirohito, they said, "Even if the question hadn't been raised by the Japanese, we would have to continue the Emperor ourselves under our command and
[24:17] supervision in order to get him to surrender the many scattered armies of the Japanese who would own no other authority." Use something like this, "to have more Iwo Jimas and Okinawas
[24:27] all over China." And then they said, "To dethrone or hang the Emperor would cause tremendous and violent reaction from the Japanese. Hanging the Emperor would be comparable to the
[24:36] crucifixion of Christ to us. All would fight and die like ants. The position of the militarists would be strengthened immeasurably." And so, it wasn't going to be a condition for
[24:45] the United, like, obviously, they were going to have to have Hirohito basically under-
[24:50] Chris Preble: Occupation, right.
[24:51] Melanie Marlowe: ... the United States, and they talk about that implicitly many, many times. But that was okay for the United States. That was in America's interest to not insist on that
[25:01] as a condition of surrender. And so, I think that there is something about... We throw out unconditional surrender all the time. Donald Trump tweets it every third Thursday that we're
[25:11] going to have unconditional surrender from Iran. So, in that sense, I think it is bad that we tend to think of it that way. I don't necessarily think that it's bad to hope that we can use
[25:22] military force to our advantage when we're getting to negotiations. But yes, I think what you're getting at is, you know, we should have a more nuanced understanding of this because it
[25:32] leads us to make irrational choices in other contexts.
[25:36] Zack Cooper: But I think the challenge here is that World War II is just not at all relevant to the kinds of conflicts that we're talking about more recently for a bunch of reasons. One
[25:48] is the U.S. and its allies in World War I had imposed severe costs, especially the French, on Germany after the war, and this time the U.S. was much more focused on what a post-war
[26:01] settlement would look like and the world that would be created by that post-war environment than it was on just ending the war and winning. And that was in part because 20 years
[26:13] beforehand, we had gotten this wrong. Another difference is that the scale of the cost to the United States was massive, they talk about how the U.S. didn't do this in Afghanistan. Look, I
[26:26] have a hard time imagining President Bush saying to the American people, "Okay, the towers are still burning. We've deposed the Taliban, but now we're going to help them come back into the
[26:39] government in Afghanistan." I think it would have been really, really politically hard. What's interesting then is how impressive it makes his father's actions in the Persian Gulf War seem.
[26:52] Like, based on this piece, you would have expected that the U.S. would have deposed Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf War. George H.W. Bush was under lots of pressure to do so
[27:05] and chose not to because he wanted much more clear war aims. And the U.S. should have been wildly overconfident, right? The Cold War was coming to an end. The U.S. was this hyperpower.
[27:18] The memory of World War II and failures in Vietnam was pretty far past. If there was ever a moment for the U.S. to have really, really expansive objectives that were not attainable, that
[27:31] would have been it. So, I actually think it's more interesting to ask not why were we restrained in World War II, but why were we restrained in the Persian Gulf War in a way that
[27:43] we haven't really been in most of the conflicts we're talking about since then?
[27:49] Chris Preble: And of course, the relative restraint of H.W. Bush, Bush 41, was singled out by those who wanted something much more thoroughgoing in the Iraq War of 2003, was to not repeat
[28:00] the errors that H.W. Bush had made, and Bush 43 was not going to do that. On the question of the Taliban, I take your point because they do talk at some length about the fact that some
[28:12] former defeated Taliban had approached the Bush administration late 2001 early 2002, and the Bush administration rejected these entreaties. And I think you're right that having the notion
[28:24] of Hamid Karzai standing in Kabul, holding the hand up high of Mullah Mohammed Omar, like these two are going to govern Afghanistan together, that was inconceivable and would've been
[28:35] politically impossible to pull off. The issue was that even if Omar himself was opposed to these entreaties, the notion that anyone who had any affiliation ever under any circumstance
[28:47] with the Taliban was not just not to be trusted and not to be allowed to even live in Afghanistan, let alone be a part of the government, was what justified a very expansive
[28:58] mission that went beyond eradicating and putting Al-Qaeda on the run, but also chasing after lots of people that we suspected of being Taliban or who, in some cases, were accused of being
[29:09] Taliban by their domestic enemies and being put on the run or under duress by the United States. Now, as the authors write, they say, "The result of rejecting those offers, the Bush
[29:21] administration's offers from the Taliban, was two decades of war, tens of thousands of deaths, trillions of dollars in cost, and an eventual Taliban restoration far less compatible with
[29:32] U.S. interests than a compromise settlement in 2002 would have been." That's what the authors say.
[29:39] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, I mean, I may quibble a little bit there with the counterfactual, or that that was necessarily the result of not taking it that time because that didn't mean that
[29:49] we had to stick around for two decades. There were many times that we could have left, but I take the broader point.
[29:56] Chris Preble: So, Zack is absolutely right that World War II cast a long shadow, but it shouldn't cast that long a shadow. It was 81 years ago, for goodness sake. But we've had
[30:07] several recent cases where you have wars in Ukraine and Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas. Do we think that military victory is achievable in Ukraine? We talked about how Russia, or we
[30:19] alluded to how Russia, assisted by some of the relaxation of restrictions and imposition of restrictions on satellite usage by the Ukrainians, is seeming to give the Russians an upper
[30:30] hand. But can they actually defeat Ukraine militarily? Can Israel defeat Hamas militarily? Is that possible? Are we imagining a Carthaginian peace by anyone? A Carthaginian peace, the
[30:42] note... You know, again, going back to the war where, as legend has it, the Romans killed or enslaved all the citizens of Carthage and then sowed the soil with salt so that nothing would
[30:54] ever grow there again. Is that simply inconceivable in the modern era?
[30:59] Zack Cooper: I think the problem is that Putin actually did succeed in 2014 perfectly when he had limited war aims. And then, per our previous conversation, he got very overconfident and
[31:11] ended up with basically war aims that would have required him to not just depose the Ukrainian government and put in a puppet regime, but maybe even take over the rest of Ukraine if he was
[31:24] going to be able to use brute force rather than coercion. That war aim was always going to be very hard to achieve. And so, as long as that war aim is so massive, there's no way to end the
[31:37] conflict without a negotiated settlement. And the same thing is obviously true for the Ukrainians. Even if they push the Russians out of all Ukrainian territory, the Russians would
[31:50] still have the ability to fight. So, you're still in a world of using compellence rather than just pure brute force. But I think the Gaza situation is a harder one, and the reason is Putin
[32:03] can manage his political dynamics at home in a way that Netanyahu probably couldn't have managed in such a dictatorial way, by which I mean, Israelis were so angry after the Hamas
[32:15] attacks, understandably so, that I think a restrained operation might have been hard for him to defend at home. I'm not saying whether that was good or bad, just like I think it would
[32:28] have been hard for George W. Bush to do a very limited operation in Afghanistan post-9/11. And that is where the Iran war... Sorry not to come there too quickly, but, like, the Iran war
[32:41] really stands out because no one was asking for it. No one wanted it at home. It's not like Donald Trump got pushed into this war, right? He, kind of, stumbled into this all by himself.
[32:54] You know, these other situations where the Israelis and Russians have gotten into lengthy, ugly conflicts were ones, in the Israeli case, where there was a precipitating event that was
[33:06] quite significant. The Iran war is pretty hard to understand when you read through this piece carefully.
[33:14] Chris Preble: Yeah.
[33:15] Melanie Marlowe: I generally agree with what Zack said with respect to Ukraine and Israel. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see what happens going forward. We aren't really talking
[33:25] about ceasefires. That's maybe a whole other show. But I think it would've been impossible for something not really huge to have happened after October 7th. There was just going to be a lot
[33:35] of destruction. And the way that Hamas had built itself and just completely uses human shields and has all the tunnels and things like that, there was no way that if Netanyahu was going to
[33:45] wage that war, that it wasn't going to be horrible. And I worry because we're technically in a ceasefire. There are still skirmishes, and people have died still on both sides. You know, a
[33:55] lot of ceasefire literature tells you it's what people use to regroup and rearm and just go back. And so, I worry... You know, especially the Palestinian Authority has put off elections
[34:05] and all of this, so what is the governance going to be there? I mean, anyway, that's another show.
[34:11] Chris Preble: I mean, I think what's interesting about Iran is this article is not... It's certainly not mostly about Iran. In fact, you could argue that Iran is merely an afterthought
[34:21] in this article. It is a much bigger story. But when Donald Trump, and I remember this so distinctly, when Donald Trump said that the object in Iran was unconditional surrender, that
[34:32] was my flashing red light. It was bad enough that he had carried out this attack with very little thought as to what the second and third-order effects would be, and, you know, you kill
[34:43] the Supreme Leader and his family, you know, what comes after, but understanding the lift associated with achieving unconditional surrender against a country of some 92, 93 million
[34:54] people, thousands and thousands of miles away, and recognizing that what he was insisting on as the terms were just completely incompatible with what the United States, what the American
[35:05] people, were prepared to spend on it, that's where I think it's relevant, even though they don't dwell on Iran in this article.
[35:13] Zack Cooper: Can I just press on that for one second, Melanie? Just because I think it's important. So, sometimes Trump said early on that the goal was regime change, which actually
[35:23] is really different in this case than unconditional surrender.
[35:27] Chris Preble: Yeah, that's right.
[35:28] Zack Cooper: Right? Like just the way it, kind of, was in Venezuela, right?
[35:33] Chris Preble: In Venezuela, right.
[35:34] Zack Cooper: Venezuela did not surrender unconditionally. But there, kind of, was half of a regime change. I think what's hard is it's not clear to any of us what was in the President's
[35:45] mind when he said unconditional surrender. Did he mean he wanted a change of government? Did he mean something else? I'm guessing he didn't know.
[35:54] Melanie Marlowe: So, I have so many thoughts on this, and you just bring up, a week or two ago, I think it was a debate between the candidates for Governor in New Jersey, but I could be
[36:03] wrong about that. And you saw a lot of people who were the Iran hawks sending that around because this candidate on the Republican side listed all these reasons why he thinks that we
[36:13] need to finish the war in Iran. And all those people that had sent that around were like, "That guy is articulating a case." You know who didn't really articulate a consistent and
[36:23] clear case? You know who didn't go to Congress and do that same thing? Donald Trump. Now, I don't really think that he stumbled into it completely unawares, I should say. Look, he's
[36:32] claimed to want to do this for a really long time, but he had a lot of people telling him it was going to be like Venezuela. He had a lot of people telling him it was going to be like the
[36:42] strikes last year, and they should not have done that. Ultimately, it was his own choice, you know, he's a grown-up and so forth. But he has moved around on the objectives, and so if you
[36:52] can't decide what your objectives are, then it makes it hard for a real discussion about what terms of surrender or terms of a ceasefire or what the terms are. So, then he just throws out
[37:02] the $300 billion and all of this other stuff, you know. I mean, it's completely insane, and obviously other people in Russia and China are watching this and understanding that we do not
[37:12] think these things out. There is not, like, strategy behind this.
[37:16] Chris Preble: And why do you think that is? And is this unique?
[37:21] Melanie Marlowe: Well, I'll say one thing, and this is over decades, the United States does not want to bear costs. We don't mind bearing military costs. We do not want to shed more
[37:32] blood. The United States does not want to get into wars where we're going to lose a lot of people, and we did lose a lot of people in the War on Terror. That was horrible. But as we've
[37:43] talked about many times with respect to the Iran war, most sensible people thought that if you were going to have all the objectives that Donald Trump tweeted out, it was going to require
[37:54] more than what we have done. And this is something that we don't like to talk about. We don't go to the American people and explain, "This is worth it," you know? In the end, we're like,
[38:06] everyone else is willing to bear costs, and Iran is enduring horrible suffering right now, and the United States doesn't want to pay more in gas.
[38:15] Chris Preble: Is what the authors say on this point. They say, "Starting a war that pays off only if the enemy gives in quickly is a gamble, and one that can easily lead to a long,
[38:27] grinding conflict whose ultimate cost exceeds the value of the stakes." I thought that was an incredibly important passage in this article because I think that for those Americans,
[38:40] including some, I suspect, in the Trump administration, who believe that quick wars, quick, cheap wars are worth the gamble because they are so confident that the wars will be quick and
[38:53] cheap. But then I would say to them, "Why do you believe the wars will be quick and cheap? And if you're wrong, if the gamble does not pay off, are you prepared to pay the costs of a long,
[39:07] protracted struggle?" And I think for most Americans, and even I think many in the Trump administration, the answer is no. The costs do not outweigh the benefit. But as you noted at
[39:19] the very beginning of the show, Melanie, it is so easy to start a war and so hard to stop one once it has started.
[39:28] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, you know, and I was in favor of Operation Midnight Hammer, but we weren't even going to land our bombers.
[39:34] Chris Preble: No, you're right. Took off from Missouri and flew back to Missouri.
[39:37] Melanie Marlowe: You know, they were flying from here, and they flew right back to Missouri. This was a completely different ballgame, and they did not anticipate what real costs might
[39:48] be, not just on our armed forces, but again, on our bases and on our allies. And for me to see people who thought this was going to be over in three or four weeks now saying, "We have to
[40:00] defend our Saudi allies," I just want to see from them what you think we should actually do concretely. Not just say we should support that. Like, what does that mean? And what are the
[40:11] costs to that? And what are the costs to our other relationships and allies, et cetera, et cetera? And I'm just not seeing that. Again, people wanted to see a plan from Joe Biden on
[40:23] Ukraine. I thought that he should have laid out a better plan on Ukraine. But we have not seen, really, anything coherent about what the plans are for Iran, except apparently the
[40:34] Navy's going to indefinitely be bringing ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
[40:39] Chris Preble: Right, and buy diesel from Russia.
[40:42] Melanie Marlowe: Right.
[40:43] Zack Cooper: I think what's hard about this, right? In the World War II example, the end of the war is when you're making a decision about what the terms are to end the conflict. But
[40:55] part of what's so difficult is in the current conflicts, like Putin, his initial war aims were the problem. The U.S. initial war aims in the Iran war were the problem. And so, now you get
[41:07] into a situation where you probably know that your initial war aims are not achievable, but it's very hard to sell something that's more minimal than those because you went to war saying
[41:19] that you had to get rid of the Nazis in Ukraine, or you went to war saying that you had to have basically regime change in Iran. And so, if you don't do that, it's hard to sell this
[41:31] costly conflict to your people. And so, I think we can all agree that Trump, Putin probably wish that they had come up with different objectives for these campaigns or had not done them
[41:44] at all. But now the question is, well, how do you redefine the objectives in a way that is achievable? You know, this piece, it's not trying to get at that question, but I think for me,
[41:56] that's where this piece leaves me, kind of, wondering, well, what do you do then?
[42:02] Melanie Marlowe: But in both cases, the war is expanding, and so it's harder for the United States or for... I won't say necessarily Ukraine, but Europe, and it's hard for the United
[42:13] States to know what to do because the Houthis are involved now, and the Strait of Hormuz is involved now. And so, what we want at any given moment, depending on what action is happening,
[42:25] is shifting. And then when you look at Ukraine, the incursions now into other countries and the sabotage and things like that that's going on, those things are expanding and complicating
[42:37] getting to a resolution, not making it easier.
[42:40] Chris Preble: And that's why I think that remaining fixed on the costs relative to the benefits and recognizing and updating those cost estimates as you go, let's go back to the
[42:51] example that we cited early. If you had said to Americans on December 8th, 1941, December 8th, 1941, when Roosevelt goes to Congress and asks for the declaration of war after the bombing of
[43:04] Pearl Harbor, if you had said to the American people, "Once we have achieved our victory, Hirohito will be allowed to live out his life in Tokyo in the Emperor's Palace," they would
[43:16] have said, "That's absolutely outrageous. We never would agree to such a thing." And yet, over time, the recognition that the cost of achieving that end was not worth holding out for that
[43:28] additional increment of effort. The same thing goes with the Morgenthau Plan with respect to Germany, in the reverse. When the Germans learned, when the Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the
[43:41] German people in the fall of 1944, it motivated them to fight harder because they believed that they were going to be sent to forced labor camps around the world and, you know, whatnot.
[43:53] So, being able to communicate war aims and critically to adjust those war aims as you go on, as you experience the cost and you weigh that, that any statesman has to be able to do that.
[44:06] Melanie Marlowe: So, I think that a lot of Americans especially would have been unhappy because of how long Hirohito lived, if they would have known that it was going to be decades
[44:16] and decades. I think he died in '89 or '90...
[44:19] Zack Cooper: '89.
[44:19] Melanie Marlowe: '89. I vaguely remember when that happened, so that would have been hard. But yes, updating what happens. This is also, I think, importantly a point to note, and not
[44:28] necessarily just with Donald Trump, but Joe Biden, too, talking all the time about Taiwan, where saying less can be saying more, especially though if you are in a conflict or giving a
[44:38] lot of support to a conflict. And constantly going out and talking about it, and I don't even mean in crazy terms, I just mean like you don't have to say stuff. You should be signaling
[44:48] stuff to your adversaries and to your allies and to the public and all of that. But the constant communication that everybody feels like they have to have can, in some instances be
[44:58] detrimental. I'll also say, I think that Zelenskyy is willing to give up stuff. I think that there are things that he would negotiate if he felt like he had the support of the Ukrainian
[45:08] people. I think there are red lines, certain red lines like the trials and execution of political leadership and maybe... Look, he demonstrated that he was willing to die for his
[45:17] country, but I think that there is something about trotting your leadership out to be executed by the Russians that is a red line. I think they want to get their kids back. They want to get
[45:27] their prisoners of war back. Those things are going to be really important. They may make a deal for Crimea or something like that. But when Putin goes out and says all this stuff all
[45:37] the time, and he feels almost no political pressure to come to a conclusion, then it's going to be really hard to get to a conclusion.
[45:45] Chris Preble: Agreed.
[45:45] Zack Cooper: You know, ultimately conflicts usually end when the sides decide that the costs of continuing are worse than the benefits. And I think fundamentally the problem in Ukraine is
[45:57] that Ukrainians understand that if they stop this conflict, they have no guarantee that Putin won't restart it because it's not clear that ultimately he's changed his objectives. And I
[46:09] think that pairs with what Melanie was just saying and suggests that we're still in here for the long haul, and this is why it's so insane for the United States to be putting pressure and
[46:21] blame on Ukraine for not ending a war that Putin started and continues to wage.
[46:27] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah.
[46:28] Chris Preble: All right. So, the article is "The Myth of Military Victory" by Stephen Biddle, Sam Winter-Levy, and Yuri Zhukov. I'll include a link in the show notes as always. Thanks to
[46:37] Melanie and Zack for a good discussion.
[46:40] Melanie Marlowe: Thank you, Chris. Okay, grievances. Frank Costanza: “The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you, people. And
[46:51] now, you’re going to hear about it!”
[46:54] Chris Preble: So, my grievance is for the way that the Saudis handled the news of incoming attacks on their airport, which the images of that were quite dramatic. I picked this
[47:04] grievance earlier in the day, and between the time that I said that they didn't handle this very well to now, they have announced the suspension of Davos in the Desert. This is where
[47:16] CEOs and rich people go to try to curry favor with the Saudis for their, you know, investments from their sovereign wealth fund. And so, I guess this is all a way of saying that karma is a
[47:27] thing, and they're experiencing it. So, I didn't need to be aggrieved and call it out because, you know, lo and behold, they had to bow to reality because they were facing the fact that
[47:39] quite a number of CEOs were pushing to not fly to Riyadh to be a part of this because the security situation right now is just too fraught.
[47:48] Melanie Marlowe: Yep. Okay, Zack.
[47:50] Zack Cooper: So, we've already talked about this twice, but I still can't get over it. I mean, the Russian approach from President Trump. And let me be specific about my grievance, which is
[48:02] with the idea that he and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping might solve the Ukraine war. None of those three are the combatant that actually matters other than Russia, which is Ukraine.
[48:15] There's, of course, no way that the Chinese could represent Ukrainian interests or that the Russians could or that the United States could. All three at the moment appear to be aligned
[48:27] more on the side of Russia than Ukraine. How can those three leaders get together and say anything useful on the Ukraine war? So, I'm sure that if this happens, the Russians will use
[48:40] it for propaganda purposes, so might the Chinese, and the damage it will do in Europe, but also with other allies, will be significant. You know, I'm here in New Zealand, and I will
[48:52] just say people cannot believe what they're watching, that America seems to have forgotten who its friends are and is aligning with our authoritarian adversaries.
[49:04] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, I heard from people all over the world. Okay. Well, my grievance, which is also kind of an atta because it's so comic, is the corruption in this administration, and I
[49:15] think that at the last episode we were aware of the allegations against Kimberly Guilfoyle, which I've got to say, if you were surprised by that, you have not been paying attention. But
[49:26] then there were more juicy stories. Well, congratulations to The Wall Street Journal for its little series there. But then, like the Rick Grenell, Alina Habba, I think that's her name,
[49:37] the President's former personal lawyer, she just married some Turkish billionaire and claims that that guy donated money to the Kennedy or Trump-Kennedy Center, as it were, or were not.
[49:48] But then, like, these millions of dollars never got deposited, and now we find out that it originated from the DRC or the whole thing.
[49:57] Chris Preble: The whole thing stinks.
[50:00] Melanie Marlowe: Well, yes, but again, it's just you can totally believe it. You can read anything, unfortunately, and think that it's all true because it is true. And I'm sorry to
[50:11] say, the Democrats are probably going to overplay their hand when it comes to the hearings. I hope they pick the right things and, you know, handle it very maturely. But I said on X, every
[50:23] day I read a story, and I think, "What must it be like to have tried to get a job in this administration and see all of this?" You know, the people who got hired instead of some of the
[50:35] serious people that were trying to go in and make some useful help. Okay, Chris, your atta.
[50:41] Chris Preble: So, I have one serious atta and one fun atta. My atta goes to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, who just issued his operational warfighting guidance. Thanks to my
[50:49] colleagues Kelly Grieco and George Saad for flagging this for me. Again, we don't have to agree with every single thing in here, but what is reflected in this...
[50:57] Zack Cooper: I don't agree with a word of it.
[50:59] Chris Preble: With a word of it? No, it's reflecting the fact that you are taking account of what is actually happening in the world and adapting your planning accordingly, and so I
[51:10] commend them for that. That was a serious atta. My fun atta...
[51:14] Zack Cooper: We got to have a show on this now, Chris.
[51:15] Chris Preble: All right, well, we can do that.
[51:17] Melanie Marlowe: I know. I was about to say it's my turn next.
[51:19] Chris Preble: My fun atta goes to my longtime colleague, Evan Cooper. Evan and I have now worked together for almost six years, and Evan's getting married this week, and so I am so
[51:31] looking forward to attending the ceremony and the celebration. And so, many, many congratulations to Evan and his fiancée, soon-to-be wife, Grace. Really happy for them both.
[51:43] Melanie Marlowe: That's great. Is he making you fly to Siberia for the...
[51:46] Chris Preble: No, we're flying to California. It's a beautiful place.
[51:49] Melanie Marlowe: Oh, that's good. I talk to people all the time, the kids these days that, like, literally go on five trips a year to awesome destinations, but good grief, it's just
[52:04] amazing. Okay, Zack.
[52:06] Zack Cooper: I got to give an atta to Anthony Scaramucci because he made it to Zacharia-
[52:15] Chris Preble: To Zacharia, yes.
[52:17] Zack Cooper: ... which is pretty impressive in the big scheme of things. But you know, just when you thought the administration couldn't screw something up even worse, they have a press
[52:27] secretary who made it four and a half days. And literally within what, 10 minutes of the start of her first briefing, it was clear that she probably was about to get fired. And I will give
[52:38] President Trump a half an atta here, he does a remarkably good job of just sometimes firing people when they've really crossed a line. And thankfully, he actually made the right decision
[52:48] in this case, and he made the right decision in the Kimberly Guilfoyle case. But it is, sort of, fascinating what you have to do to get fired in this administration. And you know, Katie
[52:59] Zacharia found out pretty fast.
[53:01] Melanie Marlowe: Yeah, that was pretty funny. People were like, "Why did they send her out on Hannity?" And well, it was obvious why they put her on Hannity, because there was no way MAGA
[53:11] world could complain about it after that. So, yeah. Okay. Well, my first atta is this amazing video I just saw this morning, goes to Ukraine for this drone rescue of a wounded soldier from
[53:21] a minefield. They sent out a drone that can carry a heavy payload, and he was able to hold on to it, and it lifted him out. And he's going to recover. I thought that was amazing. And then
[53:31] a second quick atta for a story in The Wall Street Journal about a young Russian soldier who, with the help of his mom, has been helping Ukraine target and kill his fellow troops, or I
[53:41] should say now formerly fellow. I hope I'm not spoiling the ending. And then my third atta is to our fan, Jim. I met him in Huntsville in March, and I think I mentioned him on the show.
[53:51] And before my panel, I hadn't been feeling very well that morning. I was super dehydrated. I had a little bottle of water that I kept filling up and drinking and drinking and drinking.
[54:01] And then when I was standing around waiting to go on, I really needed some more water, and so I saw his booth across the way. I ran over. I asked if he was around. He wasn't. He was in a
[54:11] meeting. I said to the young man at the desk, "He's a fan of mine. Can you please get me a bottle of water?" And the kid looked funny. I didn't have time to explain, but he came back
[54:21] with a bottle of water. So, I got to hand it to our fans, they're awesome. Yeah, that was really great. We don't get paid here, but if I can get a bottle of water from time to time,
[54:31] it's all worth it. So, what do you have coming up?
[54:34] Chris Preble: So, hey, I wanted to put on people's radar, we are hosting an event here at Stimson on the Iran war, eight months on. My friend and colleague, a non-resident fellow here,
[54:45] Michael Cohen, along with Aaron David Miller from the Carnegie Endowment, Kelly Grieco with our Strategy Program, and Paul McLeary of Politico, is moderating. This will be both online
[54:56] and in person on November 5th, 2026. So, it actually will happen before the next episode drops. So, put that on your calendar, register. I'll include a link in the show notes. There's
[55:07] a lot to talk about, what we know so far about the Iran war, and especially it'll be interesting to talk about it after the midterms have concluded.
[55:17] Melanie Marlowe: Chris, I saw that, and I thought, "Oh, that's going to be right after the election. That will be very interesting." So, good. Okay, Zack.
[55:24] Zack Cooper: I'm down in New Zealand because my friend David Capie at Victoria University of Wellington kindly invited me to be the Sir Howard Kippenberger Visiting Professor in Strategic
[55:35] Studies down here for a little bit, which is great. So, for any listeners in New Zealand, I'm giving a talk at Victoria University of Wellington. I think it starts the last week of
[55:46] October, so look that up. And then I'm also joining the Mount Fuji Dialogue in Tokyo in the middle of all of this. That should be good. So, a fun couple of weeks.
[55:56] Melanie Marlowe: Great. Okay, well, I'm hopping around the West, and I will actually have to hop back here in the Salt Lake area next week for the 47G Conference. And I'm happy to say
[56:07] some legislators that I think are taking defense and government seriously, like Senator John Curtis, will be there. So, very much looking forward to that. Thanks for listening to this
[56:19] episode of Net Assessment. If you enjoyed it, please rate us wherever you get your podcasts. As Chris said, you can follow us @RealChrisPreble, @ZackCooper, and @ProfMarlowe. Thanks to
[56:31] the Stimson Center for hosting us and to University FM for producing the show. Until next time, be well.

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