Paul Kennedy

And actually, in the literature on wars.

There's a huge book by Paul Kennedy, a big tome, nearly 1,000 pages.

And what it shows is this phenomena of the trap and how this has been occurring over time in different eras.

But there's a political science database referring to the power of nations and the ability for them to fight wars.

And the key argument with Paul Kennedy is pretty simple, that if you fight a war and you don't have the resources of your opponents, You're going to lose it.

And this was very quite clear in the Second World War and indeed in the First World War.

You know, in the Second World War, Hitler took on Russia, the United States and the British Empire.

And we most significantly contributed to the ability to win that war.

There's a wonderful book by Paul Kennedy, Professor Paul Kennedy at Yale, called The Engineers of Victory, which tells the story of mid-level folks all across our economy who did amazing things to be able to empower us.

So mid-level people stepped up and designed the Higgins boats that got people on the beaches of Normandy, or tanks that could float and move forward, or air superiority, which we gained, which was essential to being able to win the war.

Different techniques to be able to blow up bunkers or blow up to get barriers to your movement out of the way.

It is called imperial overstretch.

Described by Yale historian Paul Kennedy in his 1987 book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, written as a warning specifically about America-

Read that book

... which became a bestseller and then everyone forgot about it.

And Step 5 has a name, it is called Imperial Overstretch.

Described by Yale historian Paul Kennedy in his 1987 book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, written as a warning specifically about America, which became a bestseller and then everyone forgot about it, Step 5 has never, not once, in 2,000 years of history, failed to arrive.

The only question that has ever mattered is whether anyone in power was paying attention at Step 4.

Yeah, I read that book when I was 17 because my dad always did geopolitics.

And, uh, when I...

You know, Paul Kennedy writing, uh, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and, uh, people saying that, you know, the United States' engagement around the world was just, um, unsustainable and, uh, and that we were in sort of a secular decline because, you know, our share of global GDP was inevitably gonna go down as other countries rose and all of that.

And turns out actually, we've done okay despite all of our mistakes and all of the costs that we've incurred.

So, um, I mean, there are certain things that it would be nice not to do, like get into long, costly, and inconclusive wars in the Middle East that consume lots of our resources.

The surplus countries have been prepared to take that money and send it right back to the West, and that's just as well.

So this is the longest duration chart I've ever done, um, it's based on Paul Kennedy's book and, um, some work by a, a fellow economist I know called Sir John Greenwood.

Um, but it looks at big changes in the s- in the sort of...

They call it supremacy trends or the rise of the great powers.

You made remarks back in 2024 while you were the deputy secretary at the Ronald Reagan Institute, where you argued that production is deterrence.

And it's also interesting when you read some of the great books, including The Rise and the Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy at Yale.

He moves on to the subject of warfighting where he says, quote, in a long, drawn out, great power and usually coalition war, victory has repeatedly gone to the side with the more flourishing, productive base.

So you pull those two quotes, both yours and then Paul Kennedy's together, you hit both the deterrence side of this and then also the utility of war fighting.

So I just wanted to start off from your perspective.

What's the big strategic value of a strong defense industrial base? And what are the main risks along those lines if the industrial base cannot produce what a military needs when it needs it?

Well, it's

what my old professor, Paul Kennedy, predicted 30 years ago, said that the rise and fall of great empires, one of the signs is a parasitic elite, overextended military, financialization of the economy, disrespect for the actual producers of that economy.

And we've got all of those in abundance.

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