Seth Jones

One of the remaining sites that has raised concern, Pickaxe Mountain, sits under hundreds of feet of rock.

Trump could use a fresh round of strikes to declare victory and then reduce America's involvement in the war Even if those strikes don't deliver a decisive blow, said Seth Jones, a defense and security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I don't think anything is going to permanently set back their program, Jones said of Iran's nuclear work.

But strikes would allow Trump to start to walk away and say that you had again set back Iran's nuclear program this time.

What we're seeing with the war in Ukraine and what with the U.S. expenditure of munitions in Operation Epic Fury, that the U.S. services made a major mistake in not building up munitions stockpiles, and it has put the U.S. military in the hole that it now sits in right now.

Seth Jones, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Department of Defense official, has written extensively about the U.S.'s steady loss of its weapons surge capacity since the end of the Cold War.

You can't deter an adversary if you don't have sufficient stockpiles.

So I think it's highly unlikely that the U.S. is going to be giving a lot of its current inventory of Patriots to the Ukrainians.

Welcome to The Last Line of Defense.

My name is Seth Jones, and I have the great privilege of welcoming General Curtis Buzzard.

General Buzzard was the three-star, most recently the three-star Army commander of the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, and also the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine and SATU.

So, General Buzzard, thanks for joining us today.

We'll probably give Pickaxe a shot.

Up front now, Seth Jones, president of the International Security Program at the CSIS, Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Seth, I'm just going to put aside for a second, the president said he destroyed the nuclear program and then said he needs to come back.

But that's relevant.

So I think that is why at the moment that his own civilians are being killed, the largest numbers we've seen since this war began, I think he feels betrayed.

Yeah, well, it's a betrayal as you lay it out.

Thank you very much, Seth Jones.

And next, Kimberly Guilfoyle facing another blow tonight after she was asked to resign on reports she had asked a top MAGA donor to pay her American Express bill, which was apparently the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, so the, the volume this year has a great set of essays, uh, focused on the Western Hemisphere, uh, from Conor Pfeiffer, Joseph Ledford, and Jamie Fly, uh, all taking on sort of different aspects of what America's role in the Western Hemisphere should be, from advancing freedom and democracy to sort of the, the border security and homeland piece to, to this idea of the, the Donro Doctrine corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, uh, in terms of our, our role in the Western Hemisphere.

Uh, three great papers on the Middle East, too, from, from Seth Jones, Michael Singh, and, uh, one Mr. Roger Zakheim of the Ronald Reagan Institute.

Now, I was waiting for you to mention that one.

Come on.

So on the statue, Elliot, is your objection kind of an artistic, aesthetic objection, or is it more political? I mean, in other words, there have been any number of statues, including a 10-foot tall statue of a gilded of Trump reaching out to shake hands with Jeffrey Epstein that have been placed, you know, in public places in Washington, D.C., which strikes me as, you know, appropriate satire and parody at the expense of the president of the United States.

But so but, you know, just just curious, asking questions for a friend.

Oh, I understand.

Well, I think those statues that you refer to, those were representations of an historical

You know, paramour.

And then she was shipped off in exile to Greece as ambassador, as if that's some kind of booby prize.

You know, keep your enemies close and your friends closer.

I mean, it was it was obviously an effort to keep her from opening her big yap and talking about family secrets.

Welcome to The Last Line of Defense.

My name is Seth Jones, and I have the great honor of having the former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kath Hicks, also formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Secretary Hicks, thanks for coming on.

Thanks very much for having me, Seth.