Welcome to state of play on Mint Press News, a bi-weekly geopolitical news show hosted by myself,

Greg Stoker, a former U.S. Army Ranger turned anti-war activist. And I'm reaffirming that brief bio,

because today we are going to be talking about U.S. national security, its warfighting capabilities

looking toward future conflicts, and the lessening of U.S. national security, its war fighting capabilities looking toward future conflicts, and the

lessening of U.S. military power projection, all within the context of this intractable

recruiting crisis. We have a lot of ground to cover. I know earlier today, the International

Criminal Court just issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

and Defense Minister of Israeli Defense Forces, Yoav Galant, and we might touch on those with

regards to U.S. moral credibility, soft power, and continued war mongering, which hurts, I would say,

recruitment. But today we are joined by Major General Dennis

Lach, U.S. Army retired, who had a distinguished 35-year career in the Army Reserve. The last 14 of

those years were spent in various command positions most recently as commander of the 94th Regional

Readiness Command in Fort Devon, which holds a

background, a bachelor's degree in political science from Lafayette, a master's from West Virginia

University. He completed postgraduate studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard

University and as a graduate of the U.S. Army War College in areas of expertise, all of all

in force demographics and tradeoff, conscription and national military service, senior level

military leadership and general officer experience and reserve and National Guard force structure

and operations. Thank you so much for coming on, General. Really appreciate it.

Pleasure.

So, first of all, I've read some of your literature and your opinions and expertise on the ongoing

and tractable recruiting crisis. Going forward, we've all heard like whispers or rumors of it,

...