Shashank Joshi on Why Russia Won't Invade NATO—Yet

0:00FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places. Made this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Agent location restrictions apply, product availability varies by market. The Russian political objective here is to corrode the political cohesion of NATO. It isn't a conquer NATO territory and take over Western Europe. It is to undermine and dissolve that solidarity. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. A few days ago in Manuel Macron summoned leaders of all major French political parties to the LSE palace to warn them about the deteriorating security situation in Europe.

1:03A bunch of European governments have been warning about plans by Russia to attack the continent in some kind of way that goes beyond Ukraine. How seriously should we take these warnings? Must we expect that Russia will annex parts of European territory, that it will send drones or missile to NATO territory? Well, I could think of nobody better than Shashank Joshi to answer his question. Shashank is a regular podcast guest. He has been the defense editor of the economist for a long time. He's just moved to Washington DC to become its America correspondent. We also talked about the Middle East. Are we still at war with Iran? What is going on? Why is the oil price rising? Why is it that the Houthis, there's a Raktak band of rebels, have become the most important non-state actor in the region capable of impeding oil flows on the other side of the Arabian peninsula? To make sense of all of these things, please listen to this conversation. In the last part of it, Shashanki reminisced a little bit.

2:09We're graded students together starting in 2007. In the United States, it has, Shash has mostly lived in the United Kingdom since then. He is just back to America. What is his impressions about how America has changed? In what ways is America much more successful than Europe? And why is it that this moment is nevertheless marked by so much pessimism? Or so much anger in America? Is there a sense in which for all of America's achievements, the center of politically perhaps, but also in a broader social sense, just isn't holding to listen to that part of a conversation? To support the work we do here, please go to writing.shamong.com and I'm throwing in the highest ever discount we give out around here today. Go to writing.shamong.com slash 2026, 2026, for 30% off your first year of subscription that brings the price down to just a bit over $50, about $1 a week for two full episodes without paywalls without outbreaks and you'll feel good about supporting a show that you hopefully like.

3:21And perhaps even love. Thank you so much for becoming a supporter. Thank you for listening. TrubyShop. Shashan Joshi, welcome back to the podcast. Ah, here you are. Great to be back on. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the discussion. Every time I look around the world and I feel like there's too many things happening that are scary and too many things that don't fully understand. I said, tell to myself, let's get chashed back on the podcast. I specialize in chaos and carnage, including now in my new role in the United States of America, but I still keep a close interest in global carnage as well as domestic carnage. So I think the last time you were here, we sort of may have teased that you're going to have a new role. What is in your role? So I am now having covered defense and national security for eight years that the economist. I'm now the Washington, the economist Washington bureau chief here in Washington, DC. So tracking America's place in the world or lack of place in the world as well as all the great and not so great developments in American politics.

4:27Looking ahead to the midterms, looking ahead to 2028 and everything this administration does. So for one comes to another, perhaps at the end, we can get your impression as an outsider in the United States and how you're seeing things fair. I was struck by a meeting in the Alice Palace about a week ago at this point, a little less than that in which Mano Macron invited all of the heads of the French political parties, including the fall-after, the far right. And seems to have warned them about the worsening security situation for France, for Europe. And it sounded as though he warned about the possibility of real hybrid, perhaps non-hybrid attacks by Russia on Europe. How bad is the situation in Europe now? This is the big question of the week, I made all the noise. This is the real concern. There's a few things going on. You noticed the French meeting, which was of course very interesting because it included opposition parties.

5:31And you saw these leftist opposition parties come out of this, you'll know better than I do. You're sitting in Paris. Say, wow, we're pretty chasing by what we heard by the security situation. And by the way, the far right as well, the Rasson Miron National came out, which has taken loans from Russian banks before. They were pro-Russia, they were anti-Russia. And Marine Le Pen and Jordan Badala made a pretty remarkable statement, saying that of course when Russia is threatening French and European security, they're going to be patriots and they're going to be on the side of French security. We have a nod to fully trustworthy, there's a different question, but it is still a clear break with a kind of rhetoric they hadn't been passed. And I suspect if you saw the same thing in Britain, the reform and other hard-right parties would probably respond in the same way. My colleague in Berlin, Tom Nuttel, made an interesting point, which is that that would be very unusual in Germany. That's not what you'd expect to see in Germany, because you would never brief with sensitive intelligence the AFD in that way.

6:37But that decides the point. The point is the French government clearly sees a worsening security situation, but the real news of the week in some ways was not just that. It was that there were many other things afoot. Let me give you some examples. Germany, along with the Swedes, reinforced with live ammunition to the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. And they said clearly this is not an exercise. So in other words, they saw reason to be concerned by the prospect of a potential Russian operation against Gotland. Which in case you don't know is this island in the middle of the Baltic that is very strategically positioned, because if you can put air defenses on it and missiles on it, you can control a great deal of airspace and sea corridors in the Baltic Sea. At the same time, we saw the Polish government say, or specifically Donald Tusk say, that there was intelligence suggesting the risk of a Russian attack on Poland and other NATO allies, not a conventional ground attack, but drones and missiles landing on NATO territory that he said the Russians might attempt to portrait is accidental.

7:43And he sounded a very grave and serious tone when he issued these remarks. Now, some of this was caught up in politicking at the highest levels of the Polish government. There was a spat with the Polish president, who of course is from a different party. The first president who is allied at least with a party of law and justice was the previous government. I think said something like in a tweet, I think it was just an unfortunate tweet. Even if we're going to see territory of a Polish nation will never be devout and then up Donald Tusk saw quite rightly the opportunity to score political points. And what are you talking about? We have a government we're never going to see any Polish territory. Yes, yeah. And the very fact that they're discussing cessation or non cessation of territory is a disturbing thing. But the point is the most alarming signal came from the polls this week. Now, okay, how do we interpret this? Well, I think it's very important to be fair and even handed here and note that I spoke to a lot of other governments and officials and some of them were public. The Latvians, for example, the Latvian leadership, including the country's chief of defense, including I think the Latvian president said there's no reason for a lot. There's no reason for panic here. We're not seeing any heightened risk of action.

8:51The Estonian said we see no risk to Estonia to the Baltics. There's no risk of Russian aggression in this way that we see elevated. And so what is going on here, Yasha? This mixed messages, right? And here's how I see it. From all the conversations I've had, first of all, there is no risk of a Russian conventional ground attack on NATO. This is not right now a January 2022 type situation where the alarm bells are ringing. The Russians are mobilizing. There's a risk of an attack. That is not the case. Okay, that's not what the intelligence says. And I've spoken to lots of intelligence officials from multiple countries. There's no reason to fear that. However, there is. Let's be precise about this. So we don't have to worry Russia trying to occupy Warsaw. You're saying we also don't have to worry about Russia trying to occupy some slice of Baltic territory or anything like that. No, and I believe that we would see the antecedents of such an operation. We would see Russia, Russian activity. Look, this is not these are countries that have, you know, if you're Estonia or you are Finland, your entire, the rise on debtor of your entire security apparatus is to spot those kinds of things. Believe me, you have spies and technical sensors spread throughout the Russian West, right?

10:05In every port, in every naval base, in every around every army base, in every forest route to the border. Believe me, that is stuffed with intelligence and you will see Russian movements. So there is little risk of that. However, and this I think is the key point. There's other sorts of concerns, right? The Russians shut the border with Estonia in the last week to stop people escaping. And one of the reasons for that may be because they are preparing the ground for mobilization within Russia to get manpower for the war in Ukraine. So that could be one grounds for escalation. But I think there is a debate. And I don't think it is a settled debate over Russia's willingness to intensify its campaign of what we now call hybrid activity that is below the threshold of Article 5. And we've seen this already. We've seen this in the Russian willingness to put drones up against Ukrainian cargo planes that may be carrying shipments down for Ukraine, which could have brought a plane down over Europe. We've seen it in the willingness to put explosives in DHL packages in Leipzig in a German airport in ways that could have caused a mass casualty incident.

11:13And we've seen a string of other incidents around sabotage of power plants, railway lines across Europe. So the Russian risk tolerance of putting the pressure on Europe to try to force it to back down on Ukraine, that risk tolerance is rising. But would they really launch a missile against a Polish facility? That I think is a live debate in Europe. And the polls are not the only voice in that debate. And others disagree that the Russians would go that far. And my view is that I think the Russians are quite still quite cautious. They would like to avoid an escalation to anything that could drag NATO into a wider conflict. And I still see the red Russians is operating with some red lines on their side here. But out of the context here, I assume is the fact that Russia hasn't made a significant territorial progress over the course of the last year. And most strikingly, Russia itself is now a fear to in this war in a way that wasn't true for much of us.

12:16But when you put in decided to invade Ukraine, he started this war. Most people expected him to waltz into Ukraine, possibly be in Kiev within a week or two of a start of what he called then is still insist on calling a special military operation. As a even for that plan, thankfully fails, and Ukraine has been very effective in defending itself, the majority of this horrible war has been on Ukrainian territory. And it's been Kiev and other major Ukrainian city that have had to deal with bombardments and drone attacks and so on. And so on, increasingly Ukrainians are now able to strike Moscow to strike deep into Russian territory and serve a war that Putin started tragically because I don't wish for any Russian civil casualties any more than for any Ukrainian civil casualties has come back home to roost. And the mass be fierce that this is increasingly risk tolerance from Moscow that they feel at this point Moscow is part of this war, why not make Warsaw talent or if we can build part of a war.

13:21I think you're right, I think that it's undeniable that the Russian sanctuary, you know, homeland is not a sanctuary anymore and it's not only strikes on Moscow, it's also a huge impact on Russian refining capacity and export capacity for oil and energy. And this is probably having an impact on markets to a degree that is irritating Donald Trump as well who keeps blaming Zelensky for this as well. And from the Russian perspective, I think there's two things going on here. One of them is that they say, well, you know, if we're being attacked, the Russian, the Ukrainian rear areas, which they see as NATO territory where drones are being assembled, where weapons are being transported, should also be part of this battlefield. You know, why should we sanctuize NATO soil, although they still want to keep this within check. I think they want to turn the temperature up. That's not entirely new, right? You know, we saw a Bulgarian arms depot blown up in the last few in just quite recently. Bulgarian arms depots were being blown up 10 years ago. The CEO of Reinmetal, the German arms company, was being subject to assassination threats two years ago.

14:30So none of this is entirely new, but the Russians are turning the temperature up. There's one other aspect of this, so Yasha, which is that also two other aspect. One is Ukrainian drones are striking Russian northern ports in the Baltic area and the high north area. And some of those drones are coming quite close to the Baltic states territory from Russia's perspective, whether sincerely believed or whether infected, they say Ukrainian drones are flying over Baltic territory to take more of the country. They're going to take more efficient routes to Russia. And so they are beginning to say, well, if you're going to do that, you're becoming part of the war and we're going to strike you back. Now, I should say here very clearly the Baltic states deny that their territory is being used, but there is an element of kind of ambiguity here. The other element, of course, is that, you know, when the Russian hybrid campaign was escalating 18 months ago, the Biden administration, you know, Jake Sullivan called up the Russians and said, if this continues, you are risking us entering the war on Ukraine side. You are risking a mass casualty attack in incident and we will retaliate to this.

15:33Now, in the Trump administration, do you as Russia truly believe that Donald Trump is going to intervene in a crisis in the same way? And so you have an opportunity here, not just to push back against the increasing attacks on Russia, but also to test the cohesion of NATO, to test the boundaries. Because if a drone lands on Poli soil and blows up a depot and you say it was an accident, if Trump then says, you know, I spoke to Putin, he assured me it was an accident. You are really laying bare the divisions inside the alliance. And that is a very valuable thing because the Russian political objective here is to corrode the political cohesion of NATO. It isn't it isn't to conquer NATO territory and take over Western Europe. It is to undermine and dissolve that solidarity. Fandool is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places.

16:38May this year, most rewarding season ever with Fandool. Agent location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. CFandool.com for eligibility. Gambling problem called 1-800-Gemma. Clearly Europe is quite divided on the question of how much to support Ukraine and the United States is even more divided, including Donald Trump and other important voices in the White House that have always been very skeptical of giving too much assistance to Ukraine for they are continuing to assist Ukraine in some important ways. In recent state elections in Germany, you have seen pro-Russian or anti-Russian parties make strong gains, particularly the AfD. The Bundesliga Zara-Vagenknecht has had a more mixed showing but they also are establishing themselves as a player in general politics and one of their key issues is opposing too much aid to Ukraine. At the same time, we are seeing these quite remarkable statements from the French far left and the French far right.

17:42And of course, the more you see actual attacks on the territory of central and western Europe, the more you might imagine that this is going to unify a response, going to force the people who want to stake out this kind of ambiguous attitude towards Russia to actually rally around the flag and show that they don't just claim to be patriots, but they actually are patriots. It's harder to see sort of how much an American audience would care if there's a mass casualty event somewhere in western Europe caught by one of those bombs in a package or by a drone that supposedly was a mistake. But there is at least a chance that this attempt to divide NATO is going to backfire if Russia goes too far with it. I think that's right. Look, and I think we have to also step back, Yasha, and look at the visit by John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA to Moscow a few weeks ago.

18:42And from all the people I've spoken to, it seems that the main purpose of his visit was to deliver a message about Russia's poor performance in the war and the need to strike a deal. But what you can see there is that Ratcliffe is becoming a more important figure in the Trump administration on these debates. He met Zelensky, I think just now on the build up to the UN General Assembly. And that's a good sign for Europeans because Ratcliffe is much more hawkish on Russia. And I think the Russians have to be mindful of that as well. That the debate in the White House is not cut and dry. And if they go too far, they could precipitate, you know, a move by the Americans to step in. One example of this, by the way, is that when we saw the day of the Polish warnings by Donald Tusk, we also saw America announced that it was advancing and proceeding on a new potential army base in Poland, which is not what we expect of the Trump administration, which we typically associate with pulling back from Europe and pulling forces out of Europe.

19:43But in fact, you know, the messages are somewhat mixed. Now on the European question. And what actually just to say what Vinay Stays for one more second, obviously, it's clear that Trump has had a very contentious relationship with Zelensky that, you know, he, he lambasted Biden for giving too much aid to Ukraine to unconditionally. He continues to make some of us noises. What actually has been the record of a Trump White House? You know, have they totally abandoned Ukraine or even as they're doing this rhetoric in practice, have they actually continue to support for country? It can be a little bit hard to make heads of tails of what the actual actions have been. I would say that Trump has offered quite limited levels of support for Ukraine considerably down from those that were offered by Joe Biden. This week, on the last week, we just had the biggest ever foreign military sale, which is kind of an aid package to Ukraine from this administration that we've seen in it in its second term.

20:43That's very unusual. You know, that had not happened until just now. They had allowed USA to effectively to lapse in the form of weapons. Ukraine is in desperate need of interceptors for its Patriot missile defense systems, which as you know, the only weapon systems capable of intercepting many of Russia's ballistic missiles. America is very short of those because it expended so many in the Iran war and it hasn't given many or indeed any to Ukraine, I think, in recent, in the recent period. Europeans have given some. So that's quite a blow. And of course, in terms of its diplomacy, the administration has really effectively leaned towards Russia in the concessions that is expected Ukraine to make. But the exception to all of this, I will say, is two things. One is the new Graham bill, the tariff bill that tariff and sanctions bill that the president has, you know, has essentially ascended to and that will result in new sanctions on Russian entities and it will force Trump to impose at least some tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and are not reducing those purchases, which right now means effectively China in India as well as possibly some, you know, central European countries on the

21:46top of that. So that is progress. The other elements of progress, I will say, is that Trump covertly that is not openly has been providing intelligence to the Ukrainians to help them conduct their strike campaign that you discussed earlier against Russian energy facilities in other targets. You know, that is that is the strange topsy turvy nature of this Trump has by and large being quite critical of Ukraine. He hasn't done very much to support them, but there is some clandestine assistance going on still. And you're going to talk about how you see this playing out in Europe. I was and I think on Europe, we can see that the Slovakia will not support any campaign in Eastern Europe, but that's a stock record. We've known that's the slow back position for some time. In other ways, you know, the politics has changed more favorably in the last 18 months in Poland, of course, and I think that is a very important thing to do. I think you saw Robert Fiko say the Slovakia will not support any campaign in Eastern Europe, but that's a stock record. We've known that's the slow back position for some time. In other ways, you know, the politics has changed more favorably in the last 18 months in Poland, of course. I think you're absolutely right to note that there are limits to how far the European populace right can be seen to be pro-Russia, because the European public are not fundamentally pro-Russian, right?

23:03They see the reality of Ukraine. They don't want Russia to win in Ukraine. They see a threat from Russia. That's what everyone believes. And even in England, where you have Nigel Farage, who has taken some pretty anti-Ukraine positions in the past, and whose party has some dubious associations with Russia as well, has essentially had to back away from some of this, right? They've had to maintain distance from his earlier positions, because that's not where the British public are. So as the Russians get more aggressive, in a way, they are forcing some of their natural allies in Europe to back away from these pro-Russian positions. But I have to say, what is this amount to? Well, if the Russians blew up a plane, that's one thing. But the question in front of Europe today is, will they continue to support Ukraine to the tune of tens of billions of euros in perpetuity for the duration of this war? And that's a much more difficult position. And I think one of the issues you're going to see come back to the forefront of European debates is whether and how to seize some portion of these Russian frozen assets that are sitting in European accounts.

24:11And right now, the Belgians have been the principal block to this. But as we see the debate unfold and ask the American step back, I think European are going to have to confront, do they take this money, even though it will provoke some very difficult legal questions around, you know, how you can use Russian frozen assets? Your ability to give a high level overview of lots of details and lots of ways to actually help us make sense of these big topics is unrivaled. So thank you for doing that on Russia, Ukraine as well as the support for Ukraine in Europe and North America. Next little topic, what on earth is going on the Middle East? Are we still at war with Iran? Are we not at war with Iran? Is this a zombie war? Explain the hoodies to us. You know, give us the 101. Okay, so what's happening here? There's a lot going on. The US Iran war, which of course the Trump administration insists is not a war. I think President Trump has called it an excursion special military operation. It's special as the US SMO against against Iran.

25:15I saw a nice joke that Russia has had elections or as we should call them a special electoral operation, special, special electoral operation, which I think has been somewhat more successful than the real military operation. So where are we? Okay, look, the war, the straight up or moose is still broadly closed. Some traffic is getting through, but by and large levels of oil traffic through or moose are considerably lower than they were prior to the war. There's no deal with Iran. There is no settlement. Iran has no formal restrictions on its nuclear program. There is no formal commitment to reopen or moose. President Trump has midterms in a month. So he desperately needs to avoid a sort of a sharp flaring up of the campaign in ways that would spike the oil price. At the end of the day, politically unable to deliver the kinds of concessions to Iran, he would need to deliver to get a deal because they would be so humiliating. And so obviously, tantamount to defeat that that would also look extremely bad prior to these elections.

26:18So we're stuck in this state of limbo where Iran has considerable control over the straight. There's occasional skirmishing with America bombing Iranian coastal missile sites, Iran striking oil tankers attempting to traverse or moose. And that is going on in a kind of up and down basis. And I think that that's where the war will continue. Now, why have oil prices not spiked more than they have? Yasha, it's partly because some some one reason is people are reflagging tankers and covertly moving them through or moose without putting their transponders on. So they are trying to invisibly move through or moose and then switching them back on at the other end. And the US Navy is assisting in that process. But the other reason is Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been moving oil overland through the east west pipeline, getting it out through the red sea, which then has to exit through a choke point called the Bab al-Mandab. Right. That cannot replicate or moose, but it can push some oil out west through that way. What has been happening in recent times is that the hoothies who have this, you know, the conventional ways to refer to them as an Iran-backed rebel movement that has occupied large swathes of Yemen in recent years.

27:30But they really maintain considerable independence from Iran as well, even though they are heavily armed by it. They have demonstrated remarkable capacity to conduct missile strikes in the last two years. Just to give you an example, they have been firing missiles at Israel, which if you look at a map, if you are not familiar with this, is a damn long way away from Israel. So he is a huge long-range missile attacks. Borsing Israel. So you have to traverse all of Saudi Arabia and then most likely Jordan or possibly Egypt in order to get to Israeli territory. That is, was it thousands of kilometers? Oh yeah, and therefore the Israelis are intercepting these things, what we call exo-admosphericly, which is a fancy way of saying you have to intercept the missile in space. Now, you know, the hoothies, if you told someone six years ago the hoothies are making Israel intercept stuff in space, you'd think what are you talking about? These guys are kind of, you know, rank-tag rebels. But they've proven themselves to be an incredibly capable military force. Probably the best armed and most capable non-state military actor anywhere in the Middle East today.

28:31So passing his Bala, the Lebanese militant group, which was also backed by Iran. Now, what is the hoothies done? Okay, a couple of things. They have successfully bombed the East West pipeline, taking oil out through this alternative route. And that's a big problem, right? Because the Saudis will have real trouble repairing the pumping stations necessary to get oil out, past over some of these mountains out through the Red Sea. And you'd be clear here just to give listeners who don't like me have a map in front of them. A little bit of a sense geographically, right? So you have the Arabian peninsula, Saudi Arabia in the part where the occupied stretches from East to West. When we're talking about the straighter famous, which is on the side of the peninsula that is opposite Iran, that is one kind of way we all could get out. And so you have a problem because Iran is blockading the straight, as you were saying, mostly successfully. So then you can say, well, let's go to the West of Saudi Arabia and move through there.

29:33But that is precisely where Saudi Arabia borders Yemen. And that is the part that the hooties have now basically been able to undermine choke to some extent, perhaps, block completely. And so that's why suddenly all of that oil produced in that region just cannot get out. The end tool is now available everywhere in the US. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places. May this year, most rewarding season ever with Fandool, agent location restrictions apply, product availability varies by market. CFANDU.com for eligibility, gambling problem called 1-800-Gemmar. You've summarized it very well, but that's not all folks because the hoothies who were involved in a longstanding war with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for many years, in which they backed the internationally recognized government against the hoothies.

30:34The hoothies are now also on the advance, right? They have advanced, particularly along the coastline, and they've taken a few things. They've taken several islands in the Red Sea that are very close to the Babar Mandab Strait, which is that choke point, which you need to get out of to get from the Red Sea out into the open ocean if you're carrying oil. So that's problem number one, and they've also taken coastal territory in Mocha along the Red Sea coastline, which again gives them heightened control over these choke points. Essentially they can fire missiles at ships, and that makes life very hard for anyone trying to get oil out through these waterways. And give us a little bit of background on the hoothies. Again, as you are saying, this was a racked hack, a bunch of rebels that were rebelling against the Sunni government of Yemen that was allied with Saudi Arabia. It was a rebellion like we've seen in many countries where you have a deep ethnic or religious split in a country of minority or the group is out of power, at least, is not happy with the government.

31:42They're able to control some territory. It's very hard to pull those kind of rebellions down if you're in mountainous territory or in the desert or in other kinds of areas where it's just very hard to project complete control. How is it that they've gone from what seemed like a bloody civil war, a humanitarian catastrophe, but ultimately, you know, a kind of local skirmish to this geopolitical force? Part of it is the war in Iran because it gave the hoothies enormous leverage when oil markets were already tight. So things that previously, you know, this is not new. Like a year ago, the hoothies, before the war in Iran, the hoothies were attacking shipping in the Red Sea. And it was causing a big problem. Donald Trump bombed the hell out of the hoothies for a long time and basically failed. He basically failed to reopen the Red Sea. And at the end of it said, you know, my job here is done. I'm off. Thank you, everyone.

32:45And everyone said, you haven't done anything. You know, the straight, it's still the hoothies of one. But he said, I can't, you know, I can't count these guys into submission. And he left. And the hoothies emerged from that. I would say triumphant and European navies tried to mount a mission, but they struggled as well to take out the missiles coming in. European navies were shown up as well, very badly. But that was bad enough. But in the context of the state of hormones also being closed with other choke points cut off with oil markets tight, that collectively, I think put a lot of pressure on global energy markets. So the hoothies had more leverage. The other reason you are sure is that I think also this revealed certain geopolitical alignments, right? So the Saudis just now have said to the Americans, we need you to step in. We need help with the hoothies. And Donald Trump has said, I'm not going to do that. I'm not. I'm going to say they cut a separate deal in fact, right? So there's a kind of US Houthi non-aggression pact, but it excludes Saudi Arabia. But that was a while ago. And indeed, that was seen as throwing the Israelis and the Saudis under the bus. But now the Saudis are saying, come and help us. They're saying that now. And Trump is saying, I'm not going to do that.

33:54So in the context of the war in Iran, where the United States already appears to have been somewhat defeated and ceded control of the straight to Iran to a considerable degree. And thinking, well, I might have to in the discussions in Washington saying we might have to pull out of our frontline US bases in the Persian Gulf from these, you know, particularly the UAE and Bahrain and pull back to Jordan and Israel and other places. If you're Saudi Arabia and you're looking at that situation and you are looking at the US reluctance to become involved with the hoothies, this then becomes part of a broader realignment of in the Middle East. Whereby, you have deeper questions over America's ability to act as a security guarantor. And if you're Saudi Arabia, of course, you still want the US involved. You want a good relationship with them. But you now see the US is not going to be coming to your rescue. And I think that this will have all sorts of consequences in terms of, you know, the rearmament of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia's relationship with China and Turkey and Israel and other non-US actors.

34:56Even the Europeans, you know, the UK has this week has said it will help with defensive refueling for Saudi Arabian flights. So you can see Europeans becoming involved in all of this. But to me, this also gets back to a topic, Yashar. I think you and I discussed the last time I was on this podcast, which is that sense quite advanced military technology that these long range anti-ship missiles is becoming available more and more to these groups. And one anecdote to give you on that is when anthropic the AI company published its report on harmful uses of Claude, its AI model a week ago, one of the examples was the Houthis using Claude to improve their ballistic missile program, which I thought was just fascinating, right? This sort of group that was widely viewed as technologically primitive using the most cutting edge AI on the planet to refine the guidance systems and ballistic missiles is using to fire at chipping them at least. And being able at least until the tropically cut off their ability to do so, being able to access from cutting at your mark and technology in order to strike at America and America's allies, which is itself a fascinating story.

36:05I wonder whether there is a deeper conceptual point here about the state of modern warfare, which bridges the discussion we had of Ukraine and Russia and the discussion that we're now having over Houthis. When you look at the war in Ukraine, it is absolutely striking that the frontline has not moved very much over the last year. I'm sure that that's a simplification and there was some important movements, but effectively Russia is throwing tremendous manpower and tremendous treasure at the frontline and beginning a little bit of territory and result. But it's really not a very big result. So in the sort of atled fight in military history between offensive capabilities and defensive capabilities, when it comes to ground troops, it seems like the defensive capabilities are currently king.

37:06It is hard to advance. It is hard to control territory. Now, at the same time, when it comes to aerial warfare, because of the ability to build these huge swarms of cheap drones, which you build cheaply and then others have to use extremely sophisticated and expensive missiles to shoot down, the ability to penetrate into airspace, you have an improvement in the offensive capabilities. So Russia is able to strike at Kiev and other Ukrainian cities again and again, again, exactly these terrible civilian victims, but Ukraine is able to strike Moscow. That's really striking. I don't know when you had the last war where each site was able to hit the capital of the other at the same time. I'm sure there are other examples, but it's kind of striking. So you have this kind of weird thing where the defensive capabilities in the ground are king, but the offensive capabilities in the air are king.

38:07That's partially I think the Hootie story is not that Saudi Arabia has not been able to dislodge the Hooties from the territories they controlled. Eventually they were able to take the capital in Yemen, now effectively control the country of Yemen, not all of the territory I believe. But we're still considered non-state actor, but in some ways they are now a state actor. And at the same time, because of this advantage to offensive capabilities in the air, they're able to strike at Israel and they're able to strike at ships in the part of the sea where it's adjacent to Yemen. And that is just the fundamental change in the nature of warfare, but it's going to have very deep consequences, including these alarming developments where Macron caused everybody together because he's saying in principle, we're now vulnerable in a way that we didn't use to be. Fandool is now available everywhere in the US.

39:08So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places. May this year, most rewarding season ever with Fandool, agent location restrictions apply, product availability varies by market, CFandool.com for eligibility, gambling problem called 1-800-Gemlor. I think your point is very astute. And here's how to reconcile those two things, which is that apparent defense dominance on certain battlefields combined with the ability to strike deep in other parts of the front. How do you reconcile that? Well, here's my attempt at doing so, which is it's all about sensing. And if you bear with me, Asha here, it's a little bit tricky, but to hit something, you need to sense it, you need to find it on the battlefield, then fire something at it. That is much harder than it sounds, right? Sensing is the preeminent problem of the battlefield. The actual firing at it is kind of secondary, although, you know, cheap missiles, of course, help you would do that on mass. So if you're looking at the Ukrainian front line, it's a very sensor saturated environment. You have lots of drones, little tiny little drones up everywhere spotting anything that moves with thermal cameras, spotting movement at night, you know, infrareds, you have radar spotting things through foliage, you have satellites targeted on this area.

40:27It's very heavily surveilled and watched, and therefore anything that moves get struck. It's a kill zone. That is that defense dominance we talk about because it's very hard to do ground maneuver. You can't move a traditional armored brigade through it to take ground, unless you've, you know, deceived or you find a hole in the sensing or whatever else, like as we saw with the Cursed defensive, as we saw with the Houthi offensive, you get these opportunities, but you have to work hard for those opportunities to become free of being watched before you can move. Okay, so why then why then you know a missiles do missiles have such luck? Well, if you had a missile launcher in the kill zone, it's going to be found and it's going to be hit. So it's not easy to do that. However, sensing you can't sense everywhere equally easily, right? You can have drones up and see 10 kilometers behind the battlefield. But if you look 50 kilometers behind the battlefield, you know, your satellite coverage is going to be patchy because your satellite can only see so many places. You don't have any drones that can go that far. Or maybe you have a couple, but they are roaming behind enemy lines and they can only spot a couple of places. You know, there's going to be gaps. There's going to be holes. Did you ever, yes, did you ever play like needed you have a waste part of your teenage years playing real time strategy games like command and conquer or you know things like that where you have to kind of move little forces on a map.

41:46And there was a simulated fog of war, which would clear as you sent units out, you know, but there was foggy where you hadn't moved, you know, that is what the same problem is like. So look at Iran, right? America and Israel are bombing Iran. They have massive air superiority over Iran. They can fly over it at will. And yet Iran is still able to fire ballistic missiles. It's still able to protect its depots. And it can keep firing these things weeks into a war despite the supposed transparency of the battlefield. And the answer is that when you go deep into Iran, well behind the front lines in mountainous craggy terrain, because geography is important here as well, you can't sense things as well. And that is where we are at the front lines. You can sense and therefore it's a kill zone and the defense dominates. If you go behind the front lines to an Iranian cave in the middle of the mountains, you can have the world most advanced surveillance apparatus is the US Air Force and the Israeli Air Force. And there will always be fog. There will always be gaps. And those gaps allow people to project force at you, whether that is Shaheed Medron at the straight of Hormuz, whether that is a Houthi missiles from the mountains of Yemen to the Red Sea, or indeed, whether that is Russian projectiles fired at Europe from, you know, some sort of offshore tanker in the Baltic.

43:10That is how we reconcile these two positions. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense and help me kind of flesh out this intuition that I had from reporting and my understanding of these facts that seem to sit and easily next to each other with a real technical account. And I really think that certain general public is only at the very beginning of understanding the implications of that, which just include that it's going to be much easier for foreign adversaries, even perhaps for non-state actors to do serious damage within countries that once failed safe from actual attack. And certainly, I think still a lot of Western militaries have not sufficiently updated what happens by developing what money they're spending, where they're investing to a reality surface new warfare. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of A Good Fight in the Last Part of this Conversation, Shush and I.

44:14Try to make sense of today's America and we start by reminiscing. We were graded students together. We started together in the Guadalajat Department at Harvard in 2007. He went back to Britain after a few years, has most lived outside of the United States and has now back in America. What are his observations from the outside? In what ways is America most successful than Europe? And in what ways is the country strikingly angry, pessimistic, divided? Is America society holding together? And if not, what explains the centrifugal forces better tearing it apart? To listen to that part of a conversation to support the show, to stop hitting this annoying paywalls over stupid jingle ads, go to writing.tashamonco.com slash 2026 for 30% off your first year of subscription. Writing.tashamonco.com slash 2026, $1 a week, about $1 a week for two full episodes.

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