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MR. IGNATIUS: –he is also the author of a new novel, “2054,” which we’ll talk about toward the end of our show. Admiral Stavridis, welcome to Washington Post Live.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Wonderful to be with David Ignatius.
MR. IGNATIUS: So we’re going to get to the 75th anniversary, as I mentioned, but I want to start with something that’s on all of our minds, and that’s the tragic deaths of seven humanitarian workers for Chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen on Monday. You’re an experienced military officer. You know what modern weapons can do, how they’re fired, how command and control works. Give us your best assessment of how this tragedy could have happened, how the Israelis could have–if, as they say, this was an accident, how they could have so erroneously directed fire.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: Yeah, let me take you inside the targeteering center, David, and your own novels have unpackaged some of this. But typically, the United States and Israel and almost all of our Western allies would have the same structure. In a targeting center, there will be a lead targeteer, a very experienced officer, typically someone who will have flown that jet previously or manipulated that particular drone model previously. Typically, there will be access immediately on-site to a judge advocate general for questions of legality. There will also be an intelligence officer who is moving the intelligence feed forward. All of them will huddle prior to taking a shot like that. This is something that all Western militaries do. In most cases, it’s based on accurate intelligence, and it goes well, and we get a bad guy. Very, very occasionally, something goes terribly wrong like this.
So was it bad judgment on the part of the targeteer? Was it a technical failure in the drone itself? Was it bad intelligence that confused the convoy of World Central Kitchen vehicles? Did a judge advocate general make a mistake about how much collateral damage margin you would be willing to take? That will be part of a big investigation. It absolutely has to be, and it’s got to be a transparent investigation.
I think Israel would be wise to bring in an outside set of eyes to look at it. The results should be made public, and it’s very important, David, to conclude that there be accountability. And I don’t mean the sergeant who teed up the software. Certainly, he or she may have culpability. It may be the maintainer of the drone. It may be the intelligence at the more senior level. It could be the targeteer. Above that, at the one-star, two-star general level, I think there has to be accountability based on the facts that I see right now.
MR. IGNATIUS: So just one more question about this. Chef José Andrés, a well-known humanitarian, passionate advocate for helping people everywhere, including in Israel, has said that because of this pattern of one shot on one vehicle, then wait, another shot on another vehicle, then a third, that he thinks this was deliberate. What’s your response to what Chef Andrés has said?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: First, I give immense kudos and respect to Chef José. I work with him as part of my role. David, as you know, I’m chairman of the board of The Rockefeller Foundation. We’re very involved in a wide variety of humanitarian. There is nobody finer in their motives, their deep concern, their humanitarian energy in a positive way in the world than Chef José.
Having said that, I find it extremely unlikely that the Israeli Defense Forces would deliberately assassinate aid workers. I find that shocking. However, this is why we need a thorough investigation, and a set of outside eyes would not be a bad idea.
David, you and I are old enough to remember when the United States made a horrific mistake, and it was my beloved United States Navy, which shot down an Iranian commercial airliner in 1988. And that investigation was done with kimono, wide open, accountability, all of it. I think Israel needs to follow that pattern.
And you’ll recall, David, even more recently in the tragic days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States had a drone strike that killed an innocent family that was simply trying to get water to their children.
So these tragedies happen, but the point is, you have to accept responsibility, and you have to impose accountability. I think that can be done in a way that I hope one day will satisfy the extremely understandable, deep, heartbroken concern of Chef José Andrés.
MR. IGNATIUS: Thanks for taking this through with us, Admiral.
So I want to now turn to the 75th anniversary of an organization you served. You were its leader, Supreme Allied Commander, NATO. President Vladimir Putin seemed to be sending a birthday present to NATO this past week when he said that any Western country hosting F-16s that are bound for Ukraine was a legitimate target for Russia. I want to ask you, how real do you think that threat is to NATO?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I think it is a bluster on the part of Vladimir Putin for several reasons. Number one, he knows if he were to strike a NATO nation–let’s say he decided to launch a drone strike against Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, which I commanded as Supreme Allied Commander, where some of this training and staging for F-16s is going on. Let’s say he decided to do that. He knows the alliance would respond unanimously to reply to that, to strike back, and he also knows that his defense budget is about $90 billion. It’s not inconsequential.
The defense budget of the United States alone is $850 billion. The rest of NATO’s budget, excluding the United States, is $320 billion. NATO has 3,000 highly motivated, almost all volunteer troops. He’s got maybe a million broken conscripts. He’s embroiled in a vicious losing war in Ukraine. NATO has 15,000 combat aircraft, 800 ocean-going warships. You get the point.
I don’t think Vladimir Putin ultimately is going to attack a NATO country because of moving F-16s toward Ukraine.
MR. IGNATIUS: But NATO’s power in the end, as you know better than anyone, is a matter of its credibility and its will, and I want to ask you, honestly, whether you think the credibility of NATO’s threat to act together, when one member state is under attack, is fully credible in a period where the United States seems so reluctant. Even now, after nearly six months, assistance to our ally, Ukraine, is still stalled. Isn’t that undermining the credibility of this alliance?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I think it does, but let’s put something else on the other side of the table. We don’t have to be hypothetical here. NATO was attacked. It was attacked at 9/11 by terrorists emanating from Afghanistan.
What happened? All of the NATO nations–and I commanded that mission. It was a NATO mission. 150,000 troops came to Afghanistan to respond to an attack on NATO.
So now we come to the present, and if the question is if Vladimir Putin were to send tanks into Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania, would the NATO alliance respond? I think it would, David.
Now, having said that, yes, your predicate is correct that we diminish the sense of urgency in the credibility here in the United States, in Washington, by our failure to step up and send the military aid to Ukraine. Ukraine, of course, is not a member of NATO. However, the alliance has pledged itself behind Ukraine, and therefore, we have real obligations there, in my view.
The Europeans have already provided well over $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. The $60 billion on the table from the United States would match the European contributions, and it’s pennies on the dollar in terms of our own defense budget of $850 billion, no boots on the ground, and continue to break the phalanx of the Russian armed forces. So yes, there’s a diminishment of credibility, and I strongly urge the Congress to act and move this $60 billion forward.
Final thought, by any polling, any examination of the members of Congress, it would pass with a three-fourths vote in a straight up or down vote. Let’s hope Speaker Johnson figures out how to do that next week.
MR. IGNATIUS: I was in Ukraine last week and interviewed President Zelensky, and I got a stark picture of what he, the leader of a country at war with Russia, is doing in the absence of the kind of U.S. aid that he has requested. He talked about how he is using Ukrainian-made drones to strike Russian oil refineries and other targets deep inside Russia. The Ukrainians now have drones that can go 1,000 kilometers, further than that. They struck a target east of Moscow, as you know, a Russian drone factory, in the last few days. And he said in explaining this, “It’s fair. If my country is going to face frigid weather and blackouts of electricity, Russians should suffer that same pain and misery.”
The administration is said to be somewhat unhappy about these strikes on refineries. What do you think? Do you think this is an appropriate tactic for Ukraine, and what do you think the consequences are?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I do think it is an appropriate target, and if I were the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, I would be pounding the desk to go after critical infrastructure inside Russia. That is not license to go after apartment buildings, maternity wards, schools, theaters. Those are the kind of targets that Russia has consistently attacked. Those are war crimes. But to go after refineries, supply chains that feed the Russian military, I think those are legitimate targets.
And by the way, you know the admiral was going to bring this up at some point, but those drones are not only going after refineries. They’re going after the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which was about 60 frontline warships. It’s now down to under 40. A third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been sunk by Ukraine–here’s the punchline–which has no Navy. They’ve been taken out by drones, both air and surface, exquisite intelligence to locate them, a wide variety of technical means. The Ukrainians are becoming the MacGyvers of the battlefield in what they’re creating and how they’re using it. Those are all legitimate targets, both ashore in Russia and at sea in the Black Sea, in my view.
MR. IGNATIUS: I don’t know what “MacGyver” shows on Ukrainian television, but I get your point. I think Ukrainians would too.
We’ll turn to the effect of unmanned systems on naval warfare in a minute, but I just want to stick with something that President Zelensky told me and get your reaction. He said that without the U.S. aid he has requested, Ukraine will have no choice, because of its shortage of ammunition, to consolidate its lines, basically to step back so he has a smaller line to defend–
MR. IGNATIUS: –and retreat towards the big cities in Ukraine. You said earlier that you think Russia is losing this war, but I was hearing from President Zelensky quite a different picture of Russia moving steadily ahead. What do you think about that?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: First, on the tactics he’s describing, they are sound. We say in the military to be on defense as opposed to offense is as three is to one, meaning you’re in a much stronger position defensively, but what can make that even stronger is a smaller defended battle space. So that makes sense. It would be tragic, in my view, if the United States did not provide the weapons, the additional $60 billion, combined with what Europe has already done. That would give Zelensky certainly a year worth of real combat capability.
The reason I think Putin is losing the war–he may have some tactical successes, but when I look at his losses, these are disputed, but I think fairly accurate. I think about 120,000 killed in action, 300,000 wounded, and perhaps most damaging to the future of the Russian Federation, somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 young Russian men have left Russia to avoid the draft. And by the way, those are the ones with internet access, sufficient cash, the kind of drive to get out of a bad situation. That’s the future of Russia. When you total all that up, that’s about a million on a population of about 75 million men, 75 million women. Russia, long term, is going to feel this pain for a generation. In that sense, I think Putin is losing.
And then, finally, I don’t think even if Zelensky has to pull back, say on a line going from Kharkiv, Ukraine, down toward the Dnieper River, pull back, defend that, there is, I think, literally no way Putin could overcome a smaller Ukrainian front, even if it’s only the Europeans defending them at that point.
MR. IGNATIUS: So one final thing that Zelensky told me, I wanted to get your comment on, he said that it’s the ATACMS-300s, which are longer-range, very precise ballistic missiles that Ukraine has requested and we’ve been reluctant to send them for all sorts of reasons, that they’re what matters most to him because they would allow him to strike Russian airfields in occupied Crimea that are being used to release bombs that are having devastating effects on especially cities in southern Ukraine, like Odessa. Do you think that ATACMS-300s would be a game changer, as Zelensky seems to? Do you think that they should be provided? Do you hear, as I do, that they may actually be on the way, and what difference do you think they’ll make?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I do believe ATACMS should be immediately provided. I think Zelensky lays out a convincing case. I’m not sure it would be, in and of themselves, a complete game changer, but couple them with a squadron of F-16s, which should be arriving on that battlefield in the June-July time frame, now you’re denuding Russian offensive air capability at the same time you’re building up the Ukrainian air capability.
By the way, those F-16s are the Swiss Army knife of a battlefield. They can do air-to-air. They can do air-to-ground. They can do electronic jamming, highly capable, relatively easy to maintain. Put those F-16s in place. Give Zelensky the ATACMS to go after the Russian counterparts in Crimea. That’s a pretty good combination for the air war. The war at sea, the Ukrainians appear to me to be doing just fine.
So now you’re down to really the land war itself, the World War I trenches, tanks, artillery. Here, the key is munitions, artillery shells. Putin is outproducing the West in those. That’s, in my view, a path to real danger that needs to be addressed. So yes, ATACMS could bring another dimension to this battlefield. It’s got to be done in combination with the other dimensions of warfare. If all that occurs, I’m confident the Ukrainians will more than hold their own.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let me take you up on your earlier comment and ask the admiral about what these unmanned drones mean for the future of combat at sea, and perhaps you’d focus your comments, in particular, on the INDOPACOM theater. I’ve heard it said by thoughtful people in the Pentagon that you have to be careful about generalizing from Ukraine’s success in the Black Sea. The Pacific is a very different arena. You have typhoons. You have vast distances. You have ships that break down far from port. So just describe, if you would, what you see as the right future for naval drones in our defense, and then I’m going to ask you the hard question, whether we’re really prepared to give up aircraft carriers to get them.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: [Laughs] To give you a sense of the size and scope and scale of the Pacific Ocean, you could take all the land on earth, and it would fit inside the Pacific Ocean. I once sailed across the Pacific as the captain or commodore of a squadron of destroyers. We had sensors going out 250 miles, yet for six days, we didn’t see another ship anywhere, even on our 250-mile radars and sensors. So it’s of enormous scope and scale, whereas the Black Sea is a relatively tight and dense area. There’s really no place to hide in the Black Sea for the Black Sea Fleet, the Russian Black Sea Fleet. So they are being attacked constantly in this very small space.
Now, you expand into the Pacific, and here, let’s talk South China Sea. Let’s bring it into focus, because if we have a confrontation with China, it would probably be there. Even the South China Sea, David, is the size of the continental United States. It’s vast. It’s surrounded by mostly U.S. allies, and it is also a place where China has a home court advantage. Even though it’s very big, China still has a big unsinkable aircraft carrier called the Chinese mainland. So our carriers would have to deal with the jets, the missiles, both cruise and ballistic, coming off the hypersonic cruise missiles. So it would be a tough fight for the U.S. Navy.
At this stage–and I’ll jump right to your correct question of, okay, what about the aircraft carriers?–I think the carriers are still functional in that fight, but boy, you’re going to want to bring them in, in a pretty measured fashion. You’re not going to slam them into the South China Sea and bring them 200 miles off the coast, the way we routinely did in the War on Terror. I commanded Enterprise Carrier Strike Group. We weren’t worried because, you know, the Taliban don’t have an air force. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force. They don’t have cruise missiles. Believe me, the Chinese do. So we would start by striking Chinese air defenses. We’d use marine littoral regiments in and around to disrupt China’s capability. We’d gradually move those carriers in with a great deal of air cover over them from our bases in Japan, now in the northern Philippines, Guam. It’s still a supportable campaign, but it is a more challenging one after watching the events in the Black Sea.
MR. IGNATIUS: I’m going to ask one audience question and then turn to your new book. George Moses, one of our Washington Post Live viewers from Ohio, asks, “What happens if Ukraine falls to Putin?” In other words, if despite all the things you’ve said about Russia’s troubles, the Ukrainian lines break and you have a sudden breakout. That happens in a war. You have sudden discontinuities. What would be the consequences of that, Admiral?
ADM. STAVRIDIS: It would be disastrous for the Western alliance. It would shake NATO to its foundations. It would create a world in which Putin suddenly becomes the owner and operator of an enormous, rich nation full of natural resources–oil, gas, agrarian products, potash, fertilizer, new sea coast, access to hydrocarbons in the Black Sea. The up check for Russia is quite significant in terms of those resources.
Psychologically, spiritually, to watch that nation fall, I think, would scar any other nation that we went to and said, “Count on us,” and therefore, would shake the NATO alliance. And that would be of extraordinary, epic, negative consequence in terms of global security.
So for all those reasons, I think we need to continue to strenuously support Ukraine, and again, they’re not asking us to send 150,000 troops to Ukraine. If they did, and we agreed, we’d make short work of the Russian troops, believe me. But that’s not what they’re asking for. They are saying–and you heard Zelensky say it, I’m sure–“Give us the tools. We will do the job.” You know who else said that? Winston Churchill in the run-up to World War II. We didn’t heed that, and what happened? We ended up fully engaged in massive combat in Europe.
Here’s a chance to truly nip it in the bud with Vladimir Putin and stop him for pennies on the dollar, so a great question. The consequences are highly negative. The cost of not getting to that point is relatively small. I think it’s an easy decision.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let’s use the remaining time that we have to talk about a new novel. You have it next to you, and I have a copy here. It’s called “2054.” It’s the second in a series that you’ve written jointly with Elliot Ackerman, another distinguished combat veteran, served with enormous bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to ask you to tell our viewers a little bit about this book and, in particular, about the theme of technology reaching a point that you call, remembering Ray Kurzweil, singularity, in which intelligent machines really begin to take over from intelligent human beings. Tell us about that theme, and then I have one more question for you about the book.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: The book is set in the year of the title, the year 2054, so it’s mid-century. Earlier in the century, in the prequel, 2034, the U.S. and China have gone to war. Both nations survived the war but are seriously diminished. Therefore, by mid-century, you see the rise of other geopolitical powers, Nigeria in Africa, Brazil in South America, U.S. and China still very involved. All of these nations are pursuing something called the “singularity,” which, as you just said, David, is the point at which things come together; hence, the word “single.” And there is a merger of the biological. Your mind, your proclivities, your interests, your memories, your knowledge is merged with the mechanical, with the internet. All of that kind of fuses together.
And again, we don’t have to imagine this. Elon Musk is talking about brain implants to provide language and translation. That’s now. That’s 2024.
So 30 years on, in the novel, there’s a geopolitical game afoot as the nations of the world seek to find this singularity because of the huge advantage, artificial intelligence would impart to any great power who got there first.
MR. IGNATIUS: A final question. You do some political imagining in this book as well, imagining that the existing party system in the United States has broken by 2054 and that we have two new parties, which you call the “Truthers,” who are the passionate people on the extremes of the two current parties, and the “Dreamers,” who are the centrists. It’s nice to think of centrists being called “Dreamers.”
MR. IGNATIUS: Tell us not about the book’s plot necessarily, but about what you know as a novelist from your thinking about this that’s relevant to our politics right now in 2024.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I’ll begin with what I know as someone who thinks, reads, and writes history. You know, a lot of Americans believe that somewhere in the Constitution, you know, Article XX, it says there shall be two political parties in the United States. One shall be Republican; the other shall be Democrat. As you know, David, we didn’t start off with Republicans or Democrats. We started with Whigs, Federalists. We had Nationalists. We actually had a party called the Democratic Republicans early on. We have had a lot of political parties in this country.
Point two, I look at my children, millennials. You know, they look to the left and the right of where they are politically. They look at the extremes in the political parties. They just kind of shake their heads.
And if you look–third point–you look at actual membership in these parties, it’s diminishing. We’re going to have a significant third-party event coming up in this election, it looks like. That is, I think, a normal course for America.
And as I look ahead 30 years, I think it’s unlikely, not impossible at all, but unlikely that two current political parties continue to exist. In some ways, David, we already have four political parties in this country: hard left, hard right, kind of center right, center left. How those four elements eventually shake out is what was in my mind as I constructed a different set of political actors mid-century.
I think the takeaway for us in today’s superheated environment is that for the political parties, your best future over time is going to be to get away from the extremes on both sides and try and craft solutions that move toward the center and find leaders who are willing to work across the aisles. Poll after poll shows that’s what the majority of Americans want.
MR. IGNATIUS: So as they say, from your lips to God’s ears. Admiral James Stavridis, it’s a pleasure to have you, to be able to talk about your book and so many other wonderful topics. Thank you for joining us today on Washington Post Live.
ADM. STAVRIDIS: I’m only going to say this as a novelist with two novels. I know I’m talking to a novelist with at least five. I’ve read all of yours. Say a word about your novel that’s coming out.
MR. IGNATIUS: So I do have a new novel coming out about space warfare. It’s called “Phantom Orbit,” but we’ll save that for another time. Thank you for–thank you for mentioning it.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, folks, thank you for joining Washington Post Live. If you want more of this kind of interesting programming, please sign up for a free trial by visiting WashingtonPost.com/live–WashingtonPost.com/live–to look at what we’ve got coming and sign up for it. I’m David Ignatius. Thank you so much for joining us.
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