特朗普考虑将霍尔木兹海峡宣布为“领土”

Nick, I want to kick it off with you. I'm going to start big and broad. Are we a more secure world? Are we less secure or TBD? I never give you easy questions. Do I figure it out? Well, listen, I mean, uh, you know, if you if you look at the pure metrics, uh, of the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz, you would have to argue that, uh, we are not. Of course, President Trump would argue differently, but you had a sort of status quo, uh, prior to the US attacks on Iran, where oil was flowing through freely through the strait.

Uh, and now it's not, um, and this has been really one of the problems that has bedeviled the president. Of course, his administration continues to claim that it's Iran that wants a deal, uh, that he's in no rush. But, uh, there are some suggestions that really indicate he's growing weary of this. You also have the strain that I'm sure Mark will be able to talk about as well, on the U.S. troops and the U.S. assets that are in the region.

Uh, and there's a lot of broad concern from U.S. allies in Asia. You mentioned South Korea, if President Trump is now going to try to exert leverage over a country like South Korea, over on, well, what does that mean for the U.S.? A commitment to South Korea in a region where China is still looking to make its own moves. So a lot of uneasiness from US allies. Spin it back to the Western Hemisphere, though. You have Nicolas Maduro, who's been removed.

The president argues that's a win. Uh, but, you know, a lot of instability, a lot of concerns. So, um, you know, but certainly looking at Hormuz, uh, I would say we are not as secure as we were before. Uh, February. Mark, uh, Nicasio is just laying it also. Well, come on in on it. I am curious too. We've talked a lot about the USS Abraham Lincoln. Um, we've heard from the president saying, uh, the deployment not nearly long enough.

There's a lot of things that we could hit on, but take it away from your, uh, vantage point in terms of global national security, U.S. national security. Well, what one of the problems is how do you define U.S. interests. Now, I agree with what we've just heard that, uh, you know, there have been some very concerning events, uh, street for moves being right up there, the Trump administration, you know, they're much more, uh, skeptical about defending Europe.

They are skeptical about even the Western Pacific and believe that countries there should do more, that the United States has been taken advantage of. So from the perspective of many of the administration, we're better off because if the Europeans are threatened by Russia, that's not our problem. You know, we will be able to keep more of our forces and, um, uh, resources at home. Now, the concern is that, you know, we've we've tried that strategy twice in the past and failed both times.

You know, there's no need to try it a third time. But many of the administration folk, you know, focused on America first. Um, and one of the problems that I think they're realizing is that even if you have a strategy that says America First. We're going to focus on the hemisphere and the homeland. We still get dragged into these, uh, uh, foreign events like the Middle East. Uh, like Europe, like the Western Pacific.

So, uh, if we're a, um, global superpower, you know, we're we need to maintain those global capabilities. And right now, we're seeing that the Navy is stretched and our ammunitions inventories are much lower than, uh, the war planners would like. Yeah. Mark, I mean, what are you really moving towards, in my estimation here is this ongoing discussion of the US weapons stockpile. You know, I've, uh, talked about this with Nick plenty of times, but it seems like right now the administration is a bit sensitive to this discussion.

And I'm just curious what you think, you know, and telling our viewers who maybe aren't paying as much attention to the weapons aspect. Is it a dire situation? Is it a troubling situation? Where do you benchmark this at. I would I probably put it at troubling. Um, but you have to keep in mind that munitions covers a lot of territory, and there are some munitions where we have good stockpiles. For example, uh, we're rebuilding stockpiles for ground, uh, munitions for, uh, and, uh, there are some, uh, uh, short range ground attack munitions that, uh, we have pretty good stockpiles on.

But there are other areas where, uh, we are short. The one place where we're really desperately short is, um, defenses against ballistic missiles. And these are systems like Patriot, which many people have heard of, uh, Thad and, uh, the Navy's SM three. We've used about half of those Patriot little more, uh, SM three a little less. And there are no good alternatives. Does like, is it like a level those is it like a level that keeps you up at night?

Um. that would keep me up at night. Uh, uh, now, you know, we have alternatives from some of the other conditions in. There are some things that have come out of the war that I think do help deterrence against China. But this is the this is an area where we are sure it is going to take a long time to rebuild those. And there are no good substitutes. So, Nick, come on in on here. You know, you've covered national security from so many different angles, but let's go, um, to our military stockpile.

And what you're hearing, because the administration and I guess I understand it on some level, gets very defensive, no pun intended, when it comes to any criticism, uh, about the size of military stockpiles. What do we know for real? And I do understand we have to keep some of this quiet because it is a security issue, right? I mean, it's very interesting because having covered, uh, U.S. wars, going back to Iraq in the early 2000, I mean, as a reporter, I was used to constant daily, incessant briefings from the administration, certainly putting their spin on the state of U.S. forces, number of casualties, territory stockpiles, things like that.

And while a lot of this was considered a secret, you could get some estimation of where things stood. And this administration has taken a much different approach. It's much more difficult even to get assessment of damage on U.S. bases, uh, in the region that, uh, have been hit by Iranian attacks. So there is so much that we don't know. What we can say, though, is that some of our reporting does suggest that the administration is, um, making decisions partly because of concerns around stockpiles.

So when you had the president essentially promising to unleash a massive new, uh, military campaign against Iran a couple of weeks ago, and then the reporting suggested that U.S. allies in the region were telling him, listen, we do not think this is the best path forward. We did have some indication at that time that concerns around strikes, on U.S. allies in the region Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates. Cutter, for example, uh, that the U.S. understood it would not be able to defend them as well as it would want to, uh, because of concerns around its ability to, uh, knock down all of those incoming strikes from Iran.

So it's a very complicated picture. There's a lot at play. There's a lot we don't know. But we can at least say that the evidence we're getting from the reporting does suggest that concerns around those stockpiles are starting to influence the way the administration does make decisions in the region about what it will do next. And, Nick, when you say not be able to defend our allies in the region as much as we'd want to.

Can you unpack that for listeners who maybe don't really understand the day to day of what you might be talking about? Well, I mean, it's it's like what Mark said. I mean, if there's a ballistic missile that comes in, I mean, that's a very powerful weapon. And if it can't be defended against because there's a shortage of Patriot missiles or they're being much more selective about their targeting. Um, you know, those, those sort of targeting decisions a