Colonel: New Wars Will End The US Empire | Lawrence Wilkerson

The United States is not merely confronting a series of bad decisions; it is confronting a disordered apparatus of statecraft at a moment when strategic patience and coherent policy are most needed. The conversation with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson sketches a dire tableau: an administration marked by incoherence and a taste for proxy violence, a Europe lurching under its own political strains, and a Middle East where miscalculation—especially involving Israel and Iran—could accelerate the unraveling of American global primacy. What emerges from the exchange is less a single scandal than a systemic failing: without a functioning policy process, the risks of cascading conflict and imperial decline rise precipitously. ## What was the Alaska Summit about? The Alaska meeting—portrayed by some as an opportunity to reset great-power relations—was, in this assessment, a diplomatic non-event. According to the discussion, neither side secured meaningful commitments, and the summit failed to advance the most pressing strategic question: how to manage nuclear stability in a treaty-light era. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson notes that Russian leadership had shown eagerness to elevate talks to nuclear arms control, even suggesting multilateral engagement that could have included China and other nuclear possessors. Instead of seizing that opening, the exchange produced little more than a public confirmation of strategic distance. That failure matters because it signals a broader problem: leadership that either cannot or will not institutionalize high-level strategic dialogues. In a world where New START is the last remaining vestige of the old arms-control architecture and expires soon, missed opportunities to construct new frameworks are not merely diplomatic frustrations—they are escalatory vectors. If the two largest nuclear arsenals drift apart without new, enforceable mechanisms, accidents, misperception, and crises become harder to manage. ## Trump, Europe, and Russophobia 00: 20:34 The Future of US Foreign Policy After the Empire The conversation frames Europe’s current posture as a mix of genuine security anxiety and what Colonel Wilkerson calls a “vassal” inclination: European capitals amplify confrontation with Russia both from ideological distaste and from the structural habit of aligning closely with Washington. Yet that alignment is under stress. Popular electorates are souring, coalitions are brittle, and the continent’s leading figures appear politically vulnerable. The prediction in the exchange—that several top European leaders may be replaced within a short period—points to an existential rearrangement for NATO and for transatlantic policy cohesion. Domestically, the Trump administration is described as a departure from traditional strategic organization. Wilkerson argues it lacks a functioning National Security Council process, producing no coherent policy that can be translated into strategy and operations. Instead of a disciplined hierarchy where State defines policy, the NSC coordinates strategy, and Defense executes operations, policy flows sporadically from tweets, impulses, and competing actors. The result is tactical violence without strategic ends—proxies are used to do the fighting, while political direction evaporates. This form of governance, the conversation suggests, accelerates the decline of U.S. influence by undermining credibility and creating unpredictability that allies and adversaries alike must hedge against. If empire means the ability to shape outcomes at far remove, then the erosion is structural: a depleted defense industrial base, commitments of matériel to partners without plans for replenishment, and the political exhaustion of domestic support for extended interventions. Absent a sober recalibration, the United States risks transitioning from global hegemon to great-power with diminishing means—still influential, but no longer capable of imposing costless will on distant conflicts. ## Why is the US Provoking Venezuela & Iran? One striking strand of the exchange is the idea that provocation is not always a coherent strategy; sometimes it is the byproduct of disarray. The conversation attributes recent aggressive moves—against Venezuela, Iran, and vessels on the high seas—to an administration that prefers proxy engagements and decapitation strikes over sustained policy campaigns. Wilkerson contends that Trump’s rhetoric about ending “stupid wars” sits uneasily with an appetite for kinetic actions carried out through proxies and allied partners. Several dynamics currently encourage such behavior. First, the absence of clear policy channels allows sub-state or departmental actors—intelligence services, foreign partners, and hawkish domestic advisers—to push initiatives that serve narrow tactical goals but lack strategic forethought. Second, using proxies offers political cover: violence can be deniable, casualties can be minimized, and domestic accountability is diluted. Third, in regions like Latin America and the Middle East, the perception of American vacillation invites opportunistic escalation. The danger, underscored in the discussion, is that tactical provocations can cascade into strategic entanglements. Whether through miscalculated retaliation or alliance commitments that demand escalation, acts that are framed as limited can pull the United States into longer, costlier campaigns than planners envisioned—especially when the political apparatus lacks the capacity to cap or de-escalate them coherently. ## Israel's Attacks & Regional Realignment The conversation maps a shifting regional architecture in which Israel’s actions have become a central destabilizing factor. Wilkerson argues that recent rounds of conflict exposed Israeli strategic vulnerabilities and galvanized regional actors—including Iran and non-state proxies—to develop asymmetric capabilities. The result has been a faster-than-anticipated regional realignment: states and non-state actors are hedging, building deniability and strike capacities in ways that complicate traditional deterrence. Israel’s military operations, when combined with opaque public messaging about outcomes, distort both domestic and international perceptions. Wilkerson suggests that Israeli leadership has obscured battlefield realities to dampen public panic and to retain political cohesion. But tactical opacity can impair alliance management: if an ally misunderstands the scale or nature of a threat, it may either under-commit or over-commit in response. This regional dynamism is compounded by external players seeking influence. States that once abstained from direct confrontation now see openings to project power through proxies and asymmetric tools. The net effect is a Middle East that is less controllable through old models of deterrence and more prone to accidental escalation. ## Will Netanyahu Drag the US into War with Iran? This is the most urgent warning that emerges from the conversation: Israeli provocations, particularly under leadership inclined to press for decisive action, create a plausible path to a conflagration that would embroil the United States. Wilkerson offers a stark forecast: should Israel initiate a major strike or campaign against Iran, expectation within Israeli politics would be to call on U.S. military power to “haul their bacon out of the fire.” Given the imbalance between Israeli strategic ambitions and its battlefield realities, a request for robust U.S. intervention is conceivable. Longer-term, such an American-led campaign would be ruinous. The projection in the discussion is of a protracted, decade-long conflict costing trillions and draining both blood and political capital—an Afghanistan redux but more expansive in its regional repercussions. Iran today is not the Iran of decades past; it has cultivated systems of deterrence and asymmetric retaliation that would make a clean, quick victory unlikely. Even if regime-change were ach

New Wars Will End The US Empire Donald Trump ran on ending "stupid wars," but his administration is now seen as the most chaotic and war-prone in modern history. Is this incompetence pushing the American empire over the edge, and is a catastrophic conflict with Iran the inevitable result? To discuss this and more, today I’m talking again to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US army officer, former Chief of Staff of the Secretary of State, and a member of the activist group “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.” We explore his stark assessment of the "unbelievable incompetence" and lack of coordinated policy in the White House, and why Trump, despite his rhetoric, "relishes killing people" through proxies. Col. Wilkerson also breaks down the historical decline of the American empire, the unstoppable shift of power back to the East, and how Israel could drag the US into a disastrous, decade-long war with Iran before Thanksgiving. Links: Eisenhower Media Network: https://eisenhowermedianetwork.org/ Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00: 00:58 Military vs. State Department on War 00:02:35 The Trump Administration's Chaotic Approach to War 00:13:57 What was the Alaska Summit about? 00:15:34 Trump, Europe, and Russophobia 00: 20:34 The Future of US Foreign Policy After the Empire 00:27:30 Why is the US Provoking Venezuela & Iran? 00:32:13 Israel's Attacks & Regional Realignment 00:34:15 Will Netanyahu Drag the US into War with Iran? 00:38:01 Conclusion #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking again to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army officer, former chief of staff to the Secretary of State, and a member of the activist group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Colonel Wilkerson, welcome back. #M3 Good to be with you. I'm now more a member of the Eisenhower Media Network than anything else, but I just thought I'd put that out there as an advertisement for EMN. #M2 That's very good. Actually, what is the Eisenhower Media Network? What do they do? #M3 It's a group of retired military officers and others. Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's fame—the ice cream— is the main supporter of it. Our mission is much like Quincy: we don't like stupid wars. -- 1 of 13 -- #M2 Well, that's a very good thing. And, you know, sometimes people think that if you have served in the U.S. armed forces, then you would be inclined toward using the military. But the opposite is actually the case, isn't it? #M3 Yes, it is. And as a matter of fact, in my 40 years of experience in and out of the Pentagon, the State Department, and elsewhere, the people who want war the least are the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and the people who want it the most are the State Department people. #M2 It's very understandable, because the people from the armed services then have to put their lives on the line. But also, when it comes to Russia and Ukraine and the entire assessment of what is possible and what is not, it seems to me that usually the restraints seem to be coming from the Pentagon. Do you share that impression? #M3 Um, in my experience, yes, restraint grew in the Pentagon—nowhere else in the government. Powell, for example, when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, kept only one piece of paper under the glass on his very large desk. And the paper had the words of Thucydides, translated from the Greek. It said, "The one aspect of power men admire most is restraint." #M2 Having power and not using it—that's real power. How do you make sense of the Trump administration's approach toward the war in Ukraine and the larger structural conflict with Russia? What do you think the current administration is actually up to? #M3 Well, let me take a general point first, arising from your initial question. This administration and this Pentagon are becoming very, very different from what I just said. They're becoming a Pentagon, an administration that likes war, likes killing people, likes killing people on the high seas in total violation of international law, for example. So this administration is off the charts in terms of routine, if you will, and the way people normally feel about the use of force. Trump’s a liar. He’s an outright liar. He has told his entire MAGA group that he’s against war, that he doesn’t like war, and yet he relishes killing people. -- 2 of 13 -- And he relishes especially killing people through proxies. All we have to do is look at Ukraine and look at Gaza to see that in vivid detail. So this is a very different administration. I've served six presidents. I've known every president since 1950, really, and I have never seen anything like this. So that's my general comment. Nothing has compared to this—not Nixon, not Johnson, not JFK, certainly not Eisenhower. No president has ever been as incompetent and as intent on killing people, both domestically and overseas, as this president and this administration. #M2 How do you... Why do you think that is? Because in the first Trump administration, one of the things he didn't do was start a new war. And actually, there was this moment in 2019—the issues with the tankers in the Strait of Hormuz—when things really boiled up in the summer of 2019, and a US drone was shot down. Apparently, there were already talks of hitting the Iranians directly, and the administration didn't do that. But he killed Soleimani, of course, that winter—the next winter. But no large war. And now, the second administration seems to be going a completely different route, as you said, with Venezuela, shooting at ships and saying, "They were smuggling, therefore we can kill them," which is absolutely not true. That's just not how international law works. And of course, all the decapitation strikes, which Mr. Trump is very proud of, saying, "Yeah, we were part of that. We helped the Israelis to kill a lot of people while pretending to be negotiating." Why this change? #M3 In his first term, Trump was not a non-warrior at all. Trump set up the conditions, and Biden continued those conditions, for the war in Ukraine. So this is not a president who doesn't like war. This is a president who comes at it from different directions than most presidents when he does do it. And what that different direction is, most assertively, is proxies. He's using proxies. He's using Ukraine. He's using Georgia, or trying to. He's using Armenia and Azerbaijan, or trying to. He tried to use Romania. He's using other countries in NATO to do things that shouldn't be done right now—not if you don't want a global war. And does he know about it? I'll be the first to admit that it may be Mossad, MI6, CIA doing a lot of this. It may be Hegseth doing it. It may be others in the administration doing it. Indeed, it may even be other people in NATO doing it. And maybe Trump is so incompetent, he doesn't even know what's going on because he doesn't take National Security Council briefings. He doesn't have a national security advisor who, by job description, looks over the entire interagency— particularly Defense and State—and coordinates policy for it. He doesn't have one. Rubio is too busy attacking people in Latin America or trying to attack people in Latin America. He's not even a good Secretary of State, and he's not a national security advisor. So who is coordinating policy in the Trump administration? On Monday, it's the chief of staff. On Tuesday, it's Stephen Miller. On Wednesday, it's Hegseth. On Thursday, it's Rubio. You take your pick. The Secretary of the Treasury weighs in every now and then. -- 3 of 13 -- The Director of the FBI weighs in every now and then. There is no coordinated policy coming out of the Trump administration. There's just support for wars that he helped start in his first administration. Biden augmented them majorly, and the most prominent of these are, of course, the wars in the Levant, and we're getting ready to extend that to Iran very shortly. I'll predict it'll happen before Thanksgiving, and maybe even further if Netanyahu gets a real burr in his saddle. So anybody who wants to tell me that Trump doesn't like war, or doesn't enter wars, or doesn't start wars, or doesn't relish wars, has got to tell me what they're talking about, because it just isn't in the proof of the pudding. And as I said, there is no coordination of policy in this administration. Zero. It just flows out of Trump's mouth when he tweets or does whatever he does. But the basic things that are happening are happening underneath him, and they're happening with the various people who are doing what they can while he is oblivious to what they're doing. Or he's orchestrating the whole thing all on his own. And it's really kind of hideous what he's doing, both domestically and internationally. But I don't believe that for a minute. This man is incapable of orchestrating action on his own. So what's happening is we have chaos. We have chaos from one end of the administration to the other. #M2 I mean, the White House must be a chaotic place, even under a well-organized president and administration, just because there are so many things going on. #M3 No, not true. I served George H.W. Bush, with Brent Scowcroft as his national security advisor, Colin Powell as the chairman, Dick Cheney as the secretary of defense, and Jim Baker as secretary of state. It was as smooth a decision-making process as I've ever seen. I've taught this for 16 years on three campuses. It was the smoothest decision-making process I've ever seen. And then along came Bill Clinton, and I served that president the first year of his administration. It was total chaos—total chaos. Now, Clinton did get his act together by the second term, but it makes a hell of a difference who's in the so-called group of six, group of seven, group of eight—the people who actually do what the 1947-48 National Security Act says they are supposed to do. That is to say, they run the National Security Council in lieu of cabinet government. Anytime they're doing something that is strategic, that is security-based or foreign policy-based, the lead, accordingly, will be the State Department or the Pentagon, depending on which is the heaviest weight in the mixture, so to speak. And the National Security Advisor coordinates the whole thing. Now, I saw the best administration we've had since World War II, outside of Eisenhower. And Eisenhower started and molded this process because the act was so fresh at that time. But he's the one who started the process and made it into what it is today. H.W. Bush was Eisenhower reincarnated. You could not argue with the experience the man had. I mean, look at it. He was eight years Ronald Reagan's vice president. -- 4 of 13 -- He was ambassador to China. He was director of the CIA. He was head of the RNC. There was hardly anything H.W. Bush hadn’t done. Plus, he was in World War II as a 17- or 18-year-old fighter pilot in the Pacific. I mean, this is a man who knew what he was doing when he came to the presidency. Eight years as vice president, and I know he ran those two administrations, not Ronald Reagan. Everybody thinks Ronald Reagan was the greatest thing since sliced bread. H.W. Bush was the man doing all the dirty work in that administration—both those administrations. So I know what a good president looks like. I know what a mediocre one looks like. Bill Clinton, Obama—a little bit better than Clinton, but not a whole lot better. And I know what a really unbelievably incompetent president looks like. That's Donald Trump. #M2 So would you say that part of the problem we're seeing now is this disorganization—the chaos that stems from incompetence—because the administration is not able to structure itself and hence doesn't have a proper information flow up and down? Because that's then slightly different from