Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I've got a great episode today. I'm speaking with Michael Gordon,

a national security correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, about his book to great and destroy the inside story of the war against the Islamic State from Barack Obama to Donald Trump.

Michael has written three other books on the Wars in Iraq from Desert Storm, which was the General's War to Cobra II and the endgame.

This period covers the 1990s all the way up to the end of the Islamic State in 2019.

Lightly though, Michael's work is increasingly focused on the pivot to great power, conflict and competition with China and Russia.

So what we success we do in this conversation is tie these two stories together. What happened over the past 30 years,

we're also focusing on how that period and attention that was or was not paid to other styles of conflict is going to impact the future over the next decade or so.

Hope you all enjoy this conversation and a huge thank you to the Foundation for American Innovation for supporting the work of this podcast.

Michael Gordon, welcome to the realignment. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm glad to speak with you. As I said before, recording I'm a huge fan of your work around the Iraq Wars, Middle Eastern policy and broader Pentagon reporting for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

I want to start by asking you about a piece you wrote back in March, which is about how the United States is not ready for an emerging era of great power conflict.

We're going to get into the Iraq Wars issue, but I think that it's really important for us to sort of place ourselves in the current moment.

Can you summarize your perspective on that topic?

Yes, you know, at the Pentagon, the the claretary strategy the United States is to be able to deter Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific and also Russian aggression wherever it might manifest itself.

And this strategy was articulated when Jim Mattis was the defense secretary really in 2018 and it was embraced by the Biden administration.

In fact, Secretary Austin calls China the pacing threat, but what is pacing for me?

Well, it means it's the dominant long term concern that the US military has as it seeks to overhaul its forces for the decades ahead.

But the the challenges because at the Pentagon, there are no problems, only challenges is that.

First of all, this is an inherently difficult undertaking.

China is building up its military in a whole host of ways and its own ability to project power regionally.

And the US is trying to develop the capability to defend Taiwan and for future president decides to do so we don't have a formal obligation to do so, but it's certainly a possibility you have to be prepared for.

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