EP:62 - Special Guest: Bill Buppert, on Iran
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Why do wealthy Arab states like Saudi Arabia struggle to build effective conventional armies?
All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans.
Negotiate now. End this war.
You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton. debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. Like this. is provoked.
All right, you guys. Welcome to the show. It is provoked. I am Scott Horton. He is Daryl Cooper. And he is our special guest, Bill Bupert, my good friend. He is the Smedley D. Butler Fellow for Conflict Studies at our Libertarian Institute. And he is also one of our guest professors at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at Scott Horton.com. And this is Our show Provoked brought to you by ExpatMoney, expatmoney.com slash provoked. And um I'm really happy to have Bill here. This is going to be a great conversation, mostly between these two guys. I can already foresee, but I must bring your attention to the most important thing that Bill ever wrote, which is his review of Fool's Air. And it says, if you could, if I could give six stars, I would if you read one book about the Afghanistan.
And debacled, this is it. I spent nearly two years there, and everything Scott writes about is true. I've come to the conclusion that the purpose of all of America's wars since 1871 is to expand government power and provide a sophisticated money laundering operation for the military, industrial, congressional complex. His reading of primary and secondary sources is deep, wide, and insightful. He takes the time to follow narrative events to their conclusion and explore. Carol, I can hear you, but I can't. Just one
Scott, hang on. Um, can you hear me? Yeah. Bill says he can't hear you, but he can hear you. I can't hear you. I can hear
Daryl, but not you. Well you can hear me, right, Daryl? Yeah. Don't tell me I'm muted again. Like No, no, I hear you. Ow.
Well that's not good. But I hear Daryl. He can hear look okay. Listen, I'll Scott, you talk and I'll sign while you talk. You guys go ahead here. Uh Bill, he can hear me. Daryl, tell him that it that everybody else can hear me. Um Yeah, I think everybody else can can hear him. So he wants us to just go ahead and pick it up. I'm just gonna I'm gonna finish introducing him.
And then turn it over to you. Okay? Okay. Um, Bill, uh, as you can see, he was in Afghanistan. He was an army officer. He is our fellow, uh, Smedley D. Butler fellow at the Institute. Um, here is his uh great new piece on our blog, Failure to Launch. This we won't defend, which you guys are about to start discussing here. Um, and then here is his two great podcasts that we feature at the Institute. The Chasing Ghosts podcast, which is uh focusing on refuting counterinsurgency strategy doctrine and how there ain't no such thing and don't even try it stuff. Stupid and it's so good. Oh man, it's so good. And then also uh broader takes on more things, War Notes, a conflict podcast. And this is just top of the line stuff for all you military guys in the audience.
This is your guy. You're gonna love his podcast. It's so good. It's all at libertarianinstitute.org. And with that, I'll just turn it over to you, Coop. Cool. I can hear him loud and clear.
Yeah, Scott, I was gonna say, I don't know if we would lose the stream or not, but if you can, just bounce out of here for a second and come back and we'll try it again. But I'll take over from here. Uh there's a bunch of stuff to talk to you about tonight, Bill. Um you and I should have gotten together a long time before this, but uh I'm gonna try to try to fit everything into a reasonable time frame. Um the first thing I wanna talk about is maybe a a bit of a diversion from what we'll spend most of the episode on. But um I wanted to get your thoughts about, you know, last week we were talking about the uh the the Houthi advance and the Saudi Arabian military and I kind of made some offhand comments about uh Saudi Arabia's y uh military limitations, their inability to kind of field an effective force and made some kind of
Uh you know, kind of rather low resolution, um, you know, uh silly, poorly thought out comments about Saudi society in general.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do wealthy Arab states like Saudi Arabia struggle to build effective conventional armies?
0:04–11:30
2
What are the main limitations of Saudi Arabia’s military structure and maintenance practices?
11:30–24:06
3
How realistic is the United States’ current missile‑defense architecture against modern threats?
24:06–36:18
4
Are aircraft carriers still a viable tool for power projection in contested littoral waters?
36:18–47:05
5
What lessons does the Iran conflict teach about the limits of U.S. conventional force and logistics?
47:05–58:46
6
How do corruption, logistics failures, and reporting culture undermine U.S. expeditionary operations?
58:46–1:10:12
7
In what ways are drones, precision weapons, and hypersonic missiles reshaping modern warfare?
1:10:12–1:22:22
8
What actionable reforms does Bill Buppert propose for irregular warfare and military reform?
1:22:22–1:25:16