Proxy war

in Afghanistan, and he has a PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

He's also the author of a new book, War Without Footprints, Plausible Deniability and Proxy War, which can be a press published earlier this year.

Welcome to Power Politics, Andrew.

Thanks so much, Jeffrey.

We can't really talk about, uh, things which were discussed during the conference, which was under Chatham house rules, but Chris and Andrew were able to join us and I thank them for, for their expertise and their candor.

And, uh, you know, we, uh, I'm looking forward to reading Andrew's new book.

I've read Chris's two books, but I'm looking forward to reading his book, War Without Footprints, because I'm very much interested in covert actions and proxy wars.

So that's pretty much a wrap for this episode.

I was the guy that did all the testing on that or hired other people to help me do the testing on that so that when you use your mobile phone, you don't get hacked and everything stolen, right? So anyway, I went to this military college and when I went for residency, we spent a week on campus and they gave us classes and they have a big nursing school, a big engineering and cybersecurity school, big business school and military.

I went to the military college and I took this presentation to our presentation on proxies, proxy wars.

Proxy wars are where Bigger powers fight wars through smaller powers, one, so as not to violate treaties, but two, to have plausible deniability of what they're really doing.

And the U.S. did this.

Everybody did it with the Native Americans back in the day.

That's what – just call it for what it is.

It's big powers trying to control resources so that they can control trade and therefore geopolitical influence.

That's what it is, and it's the old playbook from proxy wars that have been – and is it going to expand? Well, it could.

how this could all turn out for the region, like what I'm thinking, I'll tell you, I'll just, let me think out loud because I, you know, my cab is like, I don't think the Iran war will escalate.

I worry about wars across the region, proxy wars escalating.

We've talked about it before.

And the Houthis is an example of this.

So there's no better time for that axis to take action and establish more influence in the region.

That's right.

And that's what we're seeing with the peripheral wars, the proxy wars, the wars that were not intended that are now becoming at the forefront.

As the United States and Israel started this war with Iran, it put pressure on Saudi Arabia to have the ability to provide an alternate to the Strait of Hormuz.

So then if you look at...

So the other big concern I've had is that the Iran-US war stops, but this spreads into multiple proxy wars, which we've talked about before.

But it's just moving so damn quickly, how quickly the Houthis have advanced.

And I'm guessing...

All right.

Well, Katie, you mentioned that it's never a question how we're gonna pay for wars, and the Ukraine proxy war is an example.

US Congress has approved more than $100 billion for the Ukraine proxy war.

Uh, everyone now has to admit that Ukraine is facing disaster heading into an- another winter with Russia stepping up its attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities as Ukraine tries to do the same in Russia.

And, uh, Congressman Brad Don Bacon is one of the biggest champions of funding the proxy war in Ukraine.

He wasn't on the Sunday morning, uh, news shows this week, but he is in Kyiv, so we thought we'd play this clip of him explaining why it's important, he thinks, to stay the course

courseI have not left that, that party.

So why do we have a president dragging his feet on this? And it, it makes me angry.

If people don't think prioritization and focus don't matter in terms of, you know, our leadership in D.C. as well as our corporate leadership, well, they'll follow the money.

But the political leadership only has so many hours in a day.

After spending all their days focused on either this war or a coming war or what have you, particularly wars like Iraq and Afghanistan or proxy wars, Syria and Libya, how are we going to succeed anywhere else?

I agree, and this is the basis of my next book that's coming out in November.

Now, I'm more of a sphere of influence guy, but I make it clear the impetus is geoeconomics.

So you're able to plant explosives on some helicopters sneaking around, which is able to create the said distraction so that you can get to their base and attack it while it is weakened.

And then this moves right into the next mission called Proxy War, which is our big assault on the said base.

So the highlights of this mission for me are we're using, like, RC planes to blow up helicopters.

Like, every once in a while, they're like, oh, we got the planes.

exactly

america the king of proxy wars by the way

exactly britain in the united states and

i'm not saying this is a good thing i'm not saying i'm glad they're doing it i'm just saying let's not be disingenuous and try to say act like oh holier than thou like this is a consequence exact same thing because we are