Trip the Beltway Fantastic With Kelley Vlahos and Friends – Détails, épisodes et analyse

This week Secretary of State Pete Hegseth called every single admiral and general to Virginia where the Pentagon is located for a meeting. It turned out to be a pair of speeches from Hegseth and President Donald Trump about what they are declaring to be the new American military era.

In his own words, Hegseth described it as “no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for war fighters.” 

“We are warriors. We are purpose built, not for fair weather, blue skies or calm seas. We're built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons of zodiacs in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul, to go to dangerous places to find to find those who would do our nation harm and deliver justice on behalf of the American people, in close and brutal combat, if necessary. You are different. We fight not because we hate what's in front of us. We fight because we love what's behind us.”

OUT are rules of engagement that restrict the necessary force, DEI, and “fat generals” walking the halls of the Pentagon. IN is a warrior ethos that only focuses on the “M” (military) and builds pride in that ethos. OUT is the word “defense.” IN is “killing and breaking things.”

Trump followed with a much less cogent speech, at one point saying he wanted to make American cities National Guard training grounds and talked about the “enemy within.” Given that he has or is threatening to send troops to a number of U.S. cities over crime and anti-ICE “rioting” this immediately sparked another wave of panic in the press and among American Constitutionalists. 

This also comes as the president and his administration appears to be leaning into a renewed Drug War, particularly military action against Venezuela, and proposals for a new Authorization for Military Force targeting “narco-terrorists” that could, in practice, see U.S. military force used in upwards of 60 countries if not the homeland itself. 

And, according to the New York Times this week, not only are there Marco Rubio-efforts within the administration to engage in a regime change operation in Venezuela, but on Thursday the paper reported that the administration has decided that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels that his team has labeled terrorist organizations, and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants.” This was conveyed by the administration in a confidential notice to Congress this week. 

There have been plenty of calls for military reform, even shaving the top officer ranks and instituting radical reforms to the culture of the institution, which has become sclerotic in its thinking, detached from American life and people, and unaccountable for its failures and corruptions.

But is what Trump is doing the right way to go? I put this question to two veterans I most respect. Brandan Buck is a scholar and fellow at the CATO institute and an Afghanistan veteran. Dan McKnight is the founder and director of “Bring Our Troops Home” and also a veteran of the Afghanistan War.

The Trump Administration reportedly has a plan to reconstruct Gaza into a Riviera on the Mediterranean. What does that mean? According to reports, President Trump, with the help of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, have laid out details for the total real estate redevelopment of the war torn Gaza Strip. This of course would require the relocation of the two million people, or what is left of the Palestinians after two years of war, who live there.

According to the Washington Post this week, it is euphemistically called the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust.

The proposal “was developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)” which is operating the Hunger Games-like food distribution centers at which more than 2000 Gazans have been killed, mostly from getting shot or shelled from Israeli military tanks. The financial planning and prospectus was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group, which has now distanced itself from the project. 

The plans, according to Washington Post, call for “a temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls ‘voluntary’ departures to another country or into restricted, secured zones inside the enclave during reconstruction.”

“Those who own land would be offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new ‘AI-powered, smart cities’ to be built in Gaza. Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food.”

The plan estimates that every individual departure from Gaza would save the trust $23,000, compared with the cost of housing them somewhere in the Strip while the reconstruction takes place — so a financial incentive to push as many Palestinians out of Gaza as possible.

Gaza’s western waterfront would be reserved for the “Gaza Trump Riviera,” boasting “world-class resorts” with the possibility of artificial islands similar to the palm-shaped ones built off the UAE city of Dubai.

For many who have been watching this nightmare in Gaza unfold, the details of the plan do not come as a surprise. Not only did Trump announce something like this was coming shortly after his inauguration, Kushner was interviewed at Harvard in March 2024 before Trump was elected saying there was “very valuable” potential in Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. 

Since then of course, tens of thousands more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli forces and they are being deliberately starved as the Netanyahu Government makes it untenable to live there. Families are being forced completely from the North of the Strip and from Gaza City as a military incursion began in earnest this week. There are no serious signs of the war abating or a ceasefire agreement coming into fruition.

The prospects of Kushner leading a real estate bonanza in this hellscape is, even beyond what we’ve seen over the last 22 months, a little hard to swallow. Here to talk about it with me are Jon Hoffman, a Middle East research fellow at the CATO Institute, and Rawan Abhari, who serves as an advocacy associate at the Quincy Institute.

This last week has been dizzying when it comes to Middle East news. As we speak the President is in the region and has already made a number of announcements regarding a massive arms deal for Saudi Arabia and another for Qatar. He announced lifting sanctions on Syria and even met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new president of Syria, the first time leaders from the two countries have met in 25 years.

Meanwhile, Trump has promised a huge announcement on Gaza (which as of this recording we have yet to hear) and his administration is engaged in ongoing talks with Iran over a possible new nuclear deal. This all comes a week after Trump announced a truce with the Houthis in the Red Sea.

All of this is happening without direct input from Israel, by all accounts. In fact, the president and his team have made a number of statements over the last week that have the nerves of the Netanyahu government jangling. Perhaps the most telling was when Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to the UN who is probably the most Zionist of his senior team, said bluntly to reporters, “The U.S. doesn’t have to tell Israel everything that it is going to do.” 

Both Witkoff and Trump have said they want the war to end, while the U.S. has been engaging in direct talks with Hamas, getting Edan Alexander, an American hostage from Oct. 7, released this week as well. 

Rather than criticized, Trump seems to be gaining a lot of steam from his base on these recent moves, which one could say is 180-degree difference from the deferential treatment he gave Netanyahu and his government during the first Trump term. MAGA is not only split, but the most vocal of them appear very much attuned to the narrative that blind and unconditional fealty to Israel is not America First, and that a more realist foreign policy, one that puts U.S. interests first, is the course that they voted for and want Trump to take. 

They are also, like Trump in his prepared remarks in Riyadh this week, outwardly eschewing the influence of the neoconservatives in U.S. foreign policy.

This of course is the real “conservative foreign policy” — as my guests today will tell you. Please welcome Brandan Buck, senior fellow at the CATO institute, who will be soon publishing his PhD dissertation, Partisans of the Old Republic: Right-Wing Opposition to U.S. Foreign Policy; and Andrew Day, senior editor at the American Conservative magazine who is also a prolific writer and a PhD.

More from Andrew:

Trump’s Huge Middle East Opportunity

Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Reset

More from Brandan: 

The Inspiring Legacy of Anti-War Conservatism

The Cognitive Shift: How the Terrorist Label May Lead to Another Forever War

Trump administration has worked doggedly to follow through on its promise to end the war. President Trump started talks with Moscow, which didn’t make the Ukrainians and the EU happy. He then worked to bring Zelensky into the fold after some tense moments in the Oval Office.

Trump then tried to bring about a ceasefire, which really didn’t work as both sides blamed each other for not keeping it. Meanwhile, Europe is seemingly determined to undermine all of it by continuing to call for more weapons and aid to Ukraine, despite all evidence on the ground that this war cannot be won on the battlefield, and the longer the war continues, Ukraine will be in a worse position at the bargaining table.

Most recently the Trump administration suggested a peace plan in which Russia would keep Crimea. This didn’t go down so well with the Ukrainians. More recently Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as part of Russia is an imperative to a peace deal, along with lifting sanctions, withdrawing lawsuits and cancelling arrest warrants, as well as returning Russian assets subjected to the so-called freeze in the West. Anything else, Sergei?

Everyone seemingly wants “to talk” but they don’t really want to talk, leaving Trump to say he will walk away from it all if he has to. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterating this said Sunday that the Trump administration will decide this week whether to continue pursuing a negotiated settlement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or to turn its attention to other matters.

This week will be “very important,” Mr. Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally if not more important in some cases.”

“But we want to see it happen,” he added. “There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic of course as well. We’re close, but we’re not close enough.”

Are they over their heads, or are these just negotiating gambits? What are the prospects that the admin actually does turn away to other priorities if Trump can't see winning here? And if so, what would happen.

Here to talk with us today are two extremely straight shooters on the subject of the Ukraine War, and have been from the beginning. Michael Vlahos, who has had a long career teaching military strategy and policy and has been a regular Sunday staple on the John Batchelor Show for over 20 years. James Carden is a writer and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord. Please check out their substacks!Where are the US-Russia and US-Ukraine peace talks going? For months now, the

Within just a year we have gone from government censorship of so-called disinformation, brought on by reactionary responses to COVID and Russia-gate, to foreign students literally being abducted off the streets and thrown into detention centers, without charge, for having the wrong attitudes (whether in op-eds, campus protests, or in the case of Badar Khan Suri, a father-in-law problem) about the Israeli government and the war in Gaza. 

The Trump administration has called this a threat to “US foreign policy” and claims the right to throw these scholars and students out of the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Bill of Rights is being tested like nothing before in recent history. Critics wonder how far it will go until citizens, particularly those working in advocacy and media organizations that deal specifically in foreign policy and national security, are caught in the crosshairs. 

My guest this week needs no introduction. John Kiriakou was a career CIA officer who ran afoul of the agency when he divulged its water boarding practices as “torture” during the Global War on Terror. He did time in prison for this, and rather than dissolve into the shadows after his nearly 3-year stint, came out more emboldened than ever to speak the truth and fight for others’ right to seek it. He has been an integral part of the whistleblower community, a podcaster and radio host, author, intelligence expert, and staunch defender of the U.S. Constitution.

We talked about the administration’s attack on free speech over the Israel issue, its attempts to deport Green Card and Student Visa holders, and what has happened to the once energized First Amendment movement on the Right. We also talked about President Trump’s moves to dismantle the Deep State, which John says is a good thing, and Trump’s seeming moves toward finding a diplomatic pathway, rather than war, with Iran.

More from John:

Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy

Pardon Me for Being Angry

Don’t miss Kiriakou on his new podcast with Michelle Witte and Ted Rall, the DeProgram Show

To say that the European debate over the war in Ukraine — at least in the elite halls of government, academia and the professional classes — is virtually non-existent, might be an understatement. For all of the grousing my friends in the realism and restraint world have done about the hive-mind thinking about Russia and the war since the 2022, it is nothing like the conformist strictures that exists in the European capitals of Brussels, UK, France, Sweden, Germany and elsewhere in the so-called transatlantic community.

In recent months, as Trump has staked out a new direction for the U.S. policy on the war — toward a negotiated settlement and away from endlessly arming a war of attrition — the Europeans have dug further in.

First, they were gobsmacked when they were not invited to initial talks with Russian leadership in the first days of the administration. Then they were taken aback by the Trump team’s insistence that Europe had to take more responsibility for its defense. Leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France and Keir Starmer of the UK used this as an opening to push for more military assistance and support for Ukraine, even proposing a peacekeeping force of European soldiers, as well as suggesting boots on the ground if the Russians became more aggressive. This, especially, has been dismissed widely as even supporters acknowledge much could not be done without the backing of the U.S. military.

At the root of it all is that the majority of European leadership, particularly in the EU, has not moved very far, if at all, from their initial position that Vladimir Putin and the Russians pose an existential threat to Europe. That is much different from the Trump position that Russia needs to be brought in from isolation in order to end the war and plan for a new security reality in Europe that does not involve NATO closing in on Russia and leaving the region on a perpetual war footing.

Here to talk with me about this and more are two prolific writers on European security, diplomacy, and politics, who have rare, alternative takes on current affairs relating to the Ukraine War, NATO and the elite foreign policy establishment in Europe. Please welcome Ian Proud, who was a member of His Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019 and recently published his memoir, "A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019” and posts at his substack, The Peacemonger.

Also, Eldar Mamedov, he has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. From 2009 to 2022, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and was in charge of the EP delegations for inter-parliamentary relations with Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula.

More from Ian: 

US-Europe divide on SWIFT could derail Ukraine peace talks

Even if the war ended tomorrow, Ukraine could end up broke by 2026

Once never-Trump, Britain's leaders scrambling to stay relevant

More from Eldar:

What happens to EU's anti-war bloc without Marine Le Pen?

Cracks in European ‘unity’ on Ukraine

McCarthyism, European style: The elite crackdown on Ukraine dissent

We are into the second week of U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. U.S. warplanes have targeted Houthi infrastructure, weapons depots and leadership in the capital city of Sana’a as well as other towns and villages in northern Yemen, which have invariably caused civilian injury and death, though the actual numbers are hard to pin down.

Not surprisingly, the Houthis have responded with their own attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea. Their missiles have been intercepted, but — like the last 17 months — the constant volley of missiles has kept the American Navy busy, in harm’s way, and exhausting a lot of expensive missiles, nearly $2 billion worth of arms, since the end of last year.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears committed to fighting the Houthis in an open-ended exercise that looks and feels like a war, yet it has not been authorized by Congress and it has not been fully explained to the American people. To top it off, an embarrassing scandal exposing top officials’ use of a signal chat room to plan the initial attack on the Houthis in Yemen on March 15 has made the administration — in particular, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who appeared to let Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg “in” to the chat — amateurish and itching to flex militarily, even despite some push back from VP J.D. Vance.

This all has a broken record feel to it. President Obama enjoined the Saudi war against the Houthis in 2014; the conflict there, which the U.S. supported with weapons and other military assistance, crushed the population and continued all through the first Trump and the early Biden administration. Airstrikes against the Houthi militants were resumed after the Houthis said it would attack Israel-connected ships in the Red Sea after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel spurred the Israeli war in Gaza, which has now killed over 50,000 people. 

International shipping has been disrupted — which the Trump administration is now using as an excuse to pummel Yemen. But is it our fight? Is it a useless one?

Here to talk about this are my friends and experts Annelle Sheline, who is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, specializing in Middle East affairs, and Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities, who specializes in military affairs.

More from Annelle:

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival

Jordan’s Abdullah at White House, looking down the barrel of a gun

More from Jennifer: 

US airstrikes against Houthis show there's 'free riding' in Red Sea, too

Washington must get out of Europe’s way on defense

“We Live in a Fascist Dictatorship”

“Mad King Trump’s Tariff Disaster”

“Trump’s neofascism is here now. Here are 10 things you can do to resist”

“A Guide to Trump’s Fascist Presidency — From Ignoring Judge to Erasing History”

“Fit for a king? Trump’s moves challenge world order and U.S. bureaucracy.”

These are all headlines I found in five minutes this morning Googling “Trump fascist“ “Trump fascism” “Trump king” and “Is Trump a monarch?”

For weeks, the legacy media and mostly the left side of the commentariat has been declaring the end of American democracy, invariably calling Trump the resurrection of Hitler, Mussolini and/or Mad King George. Most of these proclamations are steeped in a “we told you so” energy, as every day brings new outrage over executive orders, constitutionally questionable detentions, and Trump’s seeming expansionist ambitions. 

But honestly, when do we stop blaming the symptom without looking for the cause? If Trump is the new emperor, we, with our cult worship of the presidency, and Congress, with its corruption and spinelessness, have given the White House the extraordinary powers with which to eschew the checks and balances of our Constitutional republic. 

In other words, did we ask for this?

Here to talk about this are two scholars in politics, history, and culture from two points on the political spectrum. Gene Healy comes from the libertarian perspective. He is vice president for policy at the Cato Institute and is a contributing editor to Liberty magazine. He is also the author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, which was updated in 2024. 

We also welcome Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige podcast. He is also the Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the University of Washington and is the author of Rethinking U.S. World Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations among other books.

At the end February, newly minted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, who was an appointee of President Biden and had been on the job 15 months. Hegseth said Brown, a career Air Force officer, was “honorable” but “not the right man for the moment,” and said the replacements of five other three- and four-stars were “a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.”

Among the myriad criticisms about these firings is that Trump is not replacing these posts with the most qualified officers, but loyalists. This seems to be the complaint about Trump's choice last week to nominate Lt. Gen. Dan "Razin" Caine to replace Brown as his pick to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which writers at Military.com called “uncharted territory for the military.”

They say Caine, a retired three-star Air Force general, does not meet the legal requirements to serve as the chairman because he never served as the vice chairman, the head of a service branch, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command. His most recent assignment before retiring in 2024 was the Director of Special Programs and the Department of Defense Special Access Program Central Office at the Pentagon. 

The other complaint is that Trump and Hegseth have been vocal and active about dismantling the diversity and inclusion programs in the military and that Brown had been cited for engaging a quota system in the officer application pool (the military refers to them as goals) when he was Air Force Chief of Staff in 2022.  Trump’s advisors have also cited a video Brown made in the wake of the George Floyd death and ensuing protests as politicization, and what blew up his relations with Brown as well as then-chairman Mark Milley.

Hegseth is also being criticized for firing all of the judge advocate generals, also known as JAGs, the top military lawyers. Some say he wants pliancy rather than experts who can keep the military acting within the rule of the law. One of Hegseth’s big assertions is that the U.S. lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because their hands were tied due to overly stringent rules of engagement. On Friday, it was announced that he will be repealing restrictions on U.S. airstrikes, broadening the range of people who can be targeted in attacks and no longer solely focusing on striking senior leadership of terrorist organizations, as permitted under the Biden and Obama administrations.

This is a lot to unpack, as on one hand there have been complaints for years that the military brass is too top heavy, that the promotional system is broken and corruptible, and that it does not reward strategic competence and critical thinking. Rather, those who can maneuver up the food chain with political skill and high deference to doctrine and maintaining the static quo are the only ones who make it to the top. 

But what do we make of Hegseth’s moves here? Is he recognizing the real problem or is he firing these officers for completely different reasons, or a little of both? 

So we brought in friend of the show (Ret.) Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, military analyst for Defense Priorities and host of the Deep Dive podcast, to break it all down for us.

More from Danny Davis:

February 21, 2025

Ukraine’s NATO Fantasy Sparked a Nightmare War with Russia

Could Ukraine Have Avoided War with Russia?

It’s time for US troops to leave Syria

This past weekend at the Munich Security Conference it would be an understatement to say that sparks were flying, or even fireworks. More like bombs going off. It started last week with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeth saying that Ukraine would not be given membership in NATO in any peace agreement and said NATO’s European members would have to provide the lion’s share of funding for their defense. On the sidelines, the U.S. set the stage for a direct meeting with Russia in Saudi Arabia, which took place Tuesday, leaving Europe and Ukraine out. The BBC came to the conclusion that  “after this week the post-World War Two security architecture for Europe is no more. America is still in NATO but Europe can no longer automatically rely on the US to come to its aid.” There seems to be some recognition of this in remarks by NATO Secretary Mark Rutte who said in response to some of the teeth gnashing and garment rending at the confab: “To my European friends, I would say: get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defense] spending.”

That seemed to be the spirit of the Paris summit on Monday, though it is not clear if anything was achieved. 

Here to talk about how NATO and European partners are reacting to all of this are two scholars who have been quite adamant all along that the NATO alliance has not only outlived its Cold War mission but in its desperation to remain relevant has actually escalated the conflict that it is supposedly providing security for today, namely Ukraine. Sumantra Maitra is the author of The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? And a 2023 policy brief, Pivoting the US Away from Europe to a Dormant NATO.

More from Sumantra: 

Out of Shape and Out of Control: Understanding and Reforming a “Woke” NATO

A Possible Path to Peace in Ukraine

More from Justin:

The Trump Administration Should Lay Down the Law to the Europeans

Just in Time for Valentine’s Day, Hegseth Takes the Romance Out of NATO