Joscelyn ‘Round the Middle East

On today’s episode, Vital Interests author and national security extraordinaire Thomas Joscelyn makes his first ...

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On today’s episode, Vital Interests author and national security extraordinaire Thomas Joscelyn makes his first Remnant appearance. With a healthy supply of Hayek references on hand, Jonah seems determined to outdo the wonkiness of Brian Riedl’s visit earlier this week. Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, China, and the meaning of necrocracy are all discussed peacefully by the pair, until a certain name is mentioned; If you thought Jonah’s contempt for Woodrow Wilson was unparalleled, just wait until you hear the disdain that overtakes Tom at the mere mention of Henry Kissinger. 

Show Notes:

–    Tom’s journal, Long War

–    Vital Interests at The Dispatch

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  1. T. F.

    Yet another great and informative podcast. Not sure if you have previously had him on the show, but have you considered inviting Richard Haass on to The Remnant? He had a new book come out last summer (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535028/the-world-by-richard-haass/) and I'd love to hear you and him discuss the current foreign policy landscape and the first moves of the Biden Admin.

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    WKDawson

    Are you sure it is the military or is it the political leadership meddling in the PR? Kabal was rather quickly taken in Afghanistan and likewise with Iraq (twice in fact). So the military's ability to fight on the battlefield appears quite successful. However, just like in Vietnam, we military ended up running in place hopelessly trying to maintain the status quo. This seems like a problem with poor political leadership.

    It seems to me that we have the ability to fight battles, but the political will to actually carry through is lacking. The W got inebriated by the success in Afghanistan and mired himself on two fronts. This diverted focus and forced this massive effort to cover for the failures. Hillary and her thing with Libya came out similarly. So this is not R or D, this is both incompetence of both. Winning the battle is only 1/100th of the project, yet this is what we want to make the big show about. It is the hard slog of the other 99/100th of this that politicians never really prepare us for and refuse to be frank with the American people about.

    Anyway, maybe the generals are responsible for this too, but they are servants of the will of the president. Surely, they know that this running in place strategy is a recipe for disaster; if they didn't get that in Korea, surely they figured that out with Vietnam. The thing is, they are basically there (within limits) to serve at the president's whim and have no ultimate say on where things will go. General MacArthur was perhaps the most vocal general in the latter part of the 20th century, but as soon as his notions started to fall outside the ambitions of our political leadership, he was out. General Colin Powell did tell the W that if he went into Iraq, he would own it. What else could he mean other than that "it was sure to be a long slog"?

    I don't know for sure, but my impression is that it is not so much our military but our political leadership that is most at fault and all the military can do is take the wrap for the incompetence of our political leadership.

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    The Stray Goose

    1:28 "The military is good at after actions reports" - oooohhhh. I'm gonna hafta go ahead and disagree with you there.

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    The Stray Goose

    1:25 - NAME NAMES! We want to know WHO is so wrong so often.

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    Joe Co

    Great stuff... Definitely more of this w/ TJ! Loved the bookend with the Lin Wells memo too -eerily prescient in April 2001 and haunting today: "...plan accordingly."

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  6. Icarus213

    As a former Army intelligence officer, I can say that Joscelyn's comments on the intelligence community around 1:26:00 are dead on. The strategic intelligence community severely lacks a mechanism for self-correction, and confirmation bias and groupthink are very deep and long term problems. I am not sure how this can be solved, since there are no market forces that punish error and reward accuracy.

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    Andrew

    Really enjoyed this. Please have Mr. Joscelyn on as a frequent and regular guest.

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    BWG

    Definitely want to see Tom on a podcast again, perhaps to discuss Russia in E Europe - Ukraine, the Baltic states, etc.

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  9. WBS

    I'm a big fan of TJ and the Long View Journal. However, he's not the only game in town. I'm currently in Afghanistan, on my sixth deployment and speak Pashto/Dari. AQ and the TB are two distinct organization. Now, TJ is absolutely right that they are inherently intertwined. That being said, UBL was already in Kabul before the Taliban took over the capital. There has been a series of disputes between the two organizations. In fact, most reporting indicates that the TB was not aware and did not approve of the 9-11 attacks. TJ would probably disagree with this. However, to disparage those who disagree as AQ apologists is absolute nonsense. You can believe that the TB/AQ are allies, but still think they are two distinct groups. It would be nice if the Dispatch would occasionally bring in another expert for a different view point. Anyone from the Afghanistan Analyst Network (AAN) would provide people with a much more detailed viewpoint about Afghanistan and also the Taliban.

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    Ben Connelly

    Thank you for this interview. I find Tom’s newsletter always insightful and it annoys me (but doesn’t surprise me) that he gets so much grief from “endless war” folks.

    I’d love to hear a follow up episode, if he’s willing to do it, going through some of the high level failures in the US Military and what can be done about them. I was surprised and intrigued by his pessimistic response about the US Military’s potential ability to succeed in Afghanistan or in confronting China without making major mistakes.

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