Robert Gates was the US Secretary of Defense 2006-2011. The means he served as Shrub Bush’s and Dark Lord Cheney’s SecDef. And then Obama kept him on in the position, which in itself was an unusual step for the President of a different party coming into the White House. This was an early signal that Obama was not especially interested in de-militarizing US foreign policy.
I find this interview interesting I providing a 2000’s neocon take on the current Russia-Ukraine War. Katie Couric can do good interviews. But she really seems to be “phoning it in” here. (1)
Gates cites a figure that “Russia” (the USSR) suffered only 15,000 deaths in its years of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan, and that seems to be a reasonable estimate. He uses it to emphasize how much larger the Russian losses in the current war have been.
But that take on the Soviet-Afghan War steps on a favorite neocon article of faith. Which is that the US-backed jihadist insurgency in Afghanistan – we called Afghan jihadists “brave patriotic freedom fighters” at the time – was so unpopular and damaged the USSR so badly that it collapsed entirely. And that very imaginative reading of that history still informs Western assumptions about Russian politics and the utility of sponsoring a proxy war against Russia.
Gates recites a favorite conservative cliché that the US public’s tolerance for military conflicts depends on how long it lasts and how many casualties. On the one hand, this is a banal observation. Even dumb wars normally enjoy a rally-round-the-flag effect in public opinion for at least a few weeks. But that perspective that Gates recites as though it were common knowledge is actually an ideological argument in favor of using massive firepower in wars.
The argument goes that the more the US relies on airpower in a war, the less unpopular the war will be over time because this supposedly minimizes US casualties. His predecessor as SecDef in the Cheney-Bush Administration, Don Rumsfeld, was particularly fond of this kind of argument which fed into the popular trend in US military thinking of the time that carried the label Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). (2)
In the Iraq War, it was supposed to allow the US to decapitate Saddam Hussein’s government by relying on bombs and other high-tech assets, allow the US to quickly install a new US-friendly government, and do it all with a minimum of “boots on the ground” and do it all very quickly.
After the US experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the RMA mantra somehow was no longer fashionable.
One of the long-standing ideological justifications for this is an argument made by political scientist John Mueller in his book War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (1973). It’s an argument I’ve never found particularly persuasive.
Gates isn’t exactly the most impressive foreign policy advocate. But it’s worth paying attention to arguments that may be bad but are still sadly influential.
To his credit, though, he does debunk the effectiveness of the Israeli-US so-called Twelve Day War again Iran this year in restricting the Iranian nuclear program. But he also seems to think that encouraging regime-change in Iran is still a good idea.
And he’s downright mealy-mouthed about Trump’s outrageous use of US soldiers and federalized National Guard forces in Los Angeles.
Notes:
(1) Katie’s One-on-One with Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Katie Couric YouTube channel 07/15/2025. <https://youtu.be/pieiDp5hcQA?si=oSUm5wUt2brUgRkX> (Accessed: 2025-18-07).
(2) O’Hanlon, Michael (2020): A Retrospective on the So-Called Revolution in Military Affairs, 2000-2020. Brookings Institute. <https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FP_20181217_defense_advances_pt1.pdf> (Accessed: 2025-18-07).
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