Trip the Beltway Fantastic With Kelley Vlahos and Friends

Just before Memorial Day on Friday the Trump administration let go scores of staff from the National Security Council. The usual howling from the media and foreign policy establishmentarians ensued, but the Trump administration was signaling his intent to do this even during his first term. His point: that over the years — particularly in the Bush I and Obama administrations — the NSC has not only gotten bloated and unwieldy, but for President Trump in particular having much of the career staff burrowed in from the largely centrist/liberal foreign policy establishment, it was posing a real obstacle to his own agenda. 

The purge, or you can call it for dramatic purposes the Memorial Day weekend massacre, also comes on the heels of Trump re-assigning his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to represent the U.S. at the United Nations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been put into place as interim National Security Advisor and Andy Baker, foreign policy advisor to VP JD Vance, and Robert Gabriel, who advises Trump, have been appointed NSC deputies. Alex Wong, who was serving as Waltz’s deputy, has been reassigned elsewhere.

All of this is against the backdrop of international foreign policy developments of which the U.S. is at the center: a potential nuclear deal with Iran, ongoing attempts to bring the war to an end in Ukraine and a ceasefire and an end to the siege and killing in Gaza. 

To say that personnel is policy and that each hiring and firing of top people will have an effect on how each of these core issues is resolved is an understatement, especially when one considers the real split in the Trump base over what kind of approach the administration should take. On one hand, the Waltz’s of the world would rather Trump take a hard line on Putin, China, and even go to war with Iran. Vance’s orbit is more about clearly defining what the U.S. interest is in each — and then acting accordingly, preferably not rushing in with guns blazing and putting U.S. servicemembers in harm’s way.

Here to sort out all of these dynamics is my good friend Curt Mills who is the Executive Director and Editor of the American Conservative magazine. He has written and spoken extensively about the Trump orbit and the dramatic shift in Washington when it comes to Republican politics and who is driving the conversation and policy here in the Imperial City.

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

One of the most extraordinary sidebar stories of the 2024 election has been the complete implosion of mainstream media. Of course mainstream news or more exactly, legacy media, was in its death throes long before Trump won in November. The major network news, cable news, the newspapers of record — the Washington Post, the New York Times — NPR radio — all had been bleeding viewers and listeners to varying degrees, up and down, for years. The rise of social media, in particular podcasts, You Tube, and TikTok, were becoming the go to for new consumption and that reached an apotheosis in the election. For sure the cable news networks all had a  bump during the pre-election days, with FOX News leading them all, but after, they resumed the struggling path that most cable television has been on since viewers switched to streaming in droves. Even FOX has never regained its glory days. 

But that is only half the story. Americans not only lost their faith in news but have seemingly recoiled against the ideological bias of the elite media in ways that have left institutions like the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and MSNBC and CNN unmoored and left behind. Even more than their obvious preference for platforming liberal left politics, consumers are reacting to the disconnect of these organizations to the real lives and interests of people outside the wealthy bicoastal enclaves of the country. The yawning expanse of understanding between the wealthy and overeducated and the middle and working classes of the country found the former wrapped up in identity politics while the later struggled with the damage done by COVID lockdowns and inflation. When more than half the nation voted Trump the realization came like a punch in the face. Major news orgs like CNN, the Washington Post and NBC, bastions of the liberal center-left, started laying off workers and scrambling to adjust editorially. Moreover, Trump is determined to sideline them in traditional roles in Washington now too, squeezing them out of studio and desk space at the Pentagon and opening up to new media in the White House briefing room. 

This is quite the transformation to witness, especially for those like me and my guest today, Khody Akhavi, longtime journalist and video producer, who has lived and worked through the last two decades of traditional media domination. We talk about the breathtaking changes we are seeing in journalism and media and what it means for the culture, politics, and even foreign policy.

Recent videos produced by Khody:

Ending the Ukraine-Russia War

How Foreign Governments & Arms Dealers Try to Shape U.S. Policy

How Would Israel's West Bank Annexation Impact Jordan?