Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling
speaker
460 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 7 Jul
Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So we can't work and play well with others next year. All of those things are detrimental to our security. And I can't see what level of earth these guys are living in right now to think any of this is good.
Yeah, I mean, it would be possible. I think when you're talking about the overall strength of NATO, they are very good and they outweigh Russia and their military force. But that's really not what I'm worried about. It's if they are together as a NATO. they can withstand any kind of Russian aggression.
But what we're seeing is it gets to one of Putin's strategic objectives when he started this war in 2022. He truly believed that NATO was very divided and the US was very divided. And he didn't think anyone would take action. Well, he was surprised over the last three years. Well, now the question would become, will NATO pull together without a US input? I think they will.
But you now even have competing governments saying, no, we're the lead. No, we're the lead. I mean, the dynamic between France, Poland and Germany right now is very interesting to see who is building armies, who's going to be in charge. You know, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe has always been an American because they tried to pull all the nations together.
The question is going to be, there truthfully is, as Rundfeld once said, an old Europe and a new Europe. And the new Europe has experienced the threat of Putin during the Cold War. The old Europe is kind of good in their economic standards and they're feeling good about themselves. The question is, can those 32 countries of Europe fight?
Thirty one, if you discount the United States, pull together under one real main body. And if Poland gets attacked or let's put it in a different way. I'm sure Michael Weitz is concerned about this because he's got a lot of friends in the Baltics. If Estonia gets attacked or Lithuania gets attacked.
Is Brussels and is Poland, well, Poland will, but will Spain, will Norway, will they come to their aid? That's the big question. Will Article 5 drive these 31 other countries to pull together and defend against Russia that, quite frankly, is a third of the size of the Californian GDP and their military is three quarters of what it used to be or one quarter of what it used to be? So I don't know.
I can't tell you.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but we made that mistake when we said, well, Russia's got the equipment.
The key is, do they have the will to come together and fight? And we found out in Russia is no, they did not.
Yeah, it doesn't take much.
Sure. I mean, you couldn't do more things to disrupt the norm than what is going on right now. And that's the other thing. You read Crenshaw's statements. There just seems to be an apologist approach and, in fact, a praising approach to all the things that the administration is doing without the recognition that it really is, first of all, driving our economy.
But for me as a military guy, more importantly, driving our national security. toward the base, toward the bottom. And I just don't understand why. When things are in pretty good shape, you can comment on trying to get the NATO countries to live up to their GDP, which percentage of their GDP spent on defense, which is happening.
Or you can say, hey, we really need to take a look at our economic relationships with different countries unilaterally. But to throw something directly at the entire European Union, It represents a big hand, little map approach to national security. And not every country in Europe is Germany. There are differences of the 49 countries that make up the European footprint.
And it's got to be the latter. based on the attempts at damaging various institutions that contribute to what we are as a democratic nation, all the way from the three elements of government to the institution of the courts, the military, all of the different bureaus. I mean, it's one thing to say, as we've talked ad nauseum, it's one thing to say, hey, let's take a scalpel and eliminate waste.
It's another thing to just chop half-heartedly in terms of what you know people do and how you're going to destroy institutions.
Well, you know, Tim, I kind of compare this to what happened with USAID. Most people in the United States could not even spell USAID a couple of months ago. They had no clue.
That's what I mean. But they had no idea what that organization did or does. And I would think, you know, when you say VA to most Americans, what do they think of? Well, they think of, you know, former retired military people going to hospitals and getting medical treatment. But the VA is just a massive organization that does everything from
taking care of cemeteries throughout the country, all the veteran cemeteries, the national cemeteries, all the way to suicide helplines for a generation of veterans who have experienced post-traumatic stress. To have somebody like an Elon Musk who has never served go in and just start chopping away at it and eliminating programs without even knowing what they do.
Showing 321–340 of 460 · page 17 of 23
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