- American foreign policy under Trump.

How is it changing and what's at stake?

This week on Firing Line.

- Most European nations, they're decaying.

They're decaying.

They wanna be politically correct and it makes them weak.

- President Trump just released his new plan for America's foreign policy.

There are significant changes from his first term.

What are the values in this new National Security Strategy?

- I couldn't find any, to be honest with you.

- [Margaret] Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling was the US Army's commander in Europe.

- You can't see any of our values in the current National Security Strategy.

And if we're not living by our values, then we are going to turn away from who we are as a nation.

- [Margaret] He served 38 years in the Army, including tours in both Iraq wars, retiring as a three star general.

He is troubled by some of the decisions of current military leadership, including the lethal attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

- It's not an imminent threat and it's not a declared war.

So it just seems to me to be in conflict with common sense and the reality of any time you go to war.

- [Margaret] What does Lieutenant General Mark Hertling say now?

- [Announcer] Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, and by the following.

- General Mark Hertling, welcome to Firing Line.

- It is great to be with you.

Thanks for asking me.

- We're now almost one year into President Trump's second term, and we're in a very different world than the President first faced in 2017.

And it's a very different presidency so far.

I wonder from your perspective, what are the biggest differences in President Trump's foreign policy posture now in 2025 than it was in 2017?

- Margaret, we saw in the first administration that, and this has been well publicized, that he had a lot more people building guardrails for him, making sure he knew what abided by the law and what went outside of it.

What we're seeing now, I think, is he has a coterie of people around him, either not giving him good advice or he's not taking it.

So, what I'm seeing is a lot more desire to go faster in some very unusual ways and really not care about any of the guardrails.

- What do you mean by unusual ways?

- Well, he's not looking at the legal ramifications of some of the things he's doing.

He's just blowing through quite a few things that are not his alone, in my view, and many others.

Some of those requirements belong to Congress, to the departments, to the kinds of things that he's asking people to do that are contrary to what our values and our norms are as a nation and what we've believed from the very beginning of our founding.

- Yeah.

You know, we continue to learn more about the incident in September in which Admiral Frank Bradley ordered a second strike after two survivors were spotted amid the wreckage of a boat in the Caribbean.

Based on what we know so far, you have said that this appears to be a war crime.

And while we have not seen the video of the second strike and have not learned all the details, I wonder what it would take for you, General, to change your perception or be convinced that the second strike was legal.

- Well, if I were to see the video, I would first compare it to what happened on the first strike and what kind of condition the men were in.

That's been described to us on the news by people who have seen the videos.

But I also put it from the moral perspective, Margaret.

You know, we are bombing boats in an undeclared conflict in international waters where these individuals are unarmed and there's been no approval of doing this by Congress or even a statement of what the strategy is.

For the life of me, and I've done campaign planning before and contingency planning and war plans as it's better known to the American public, I can't see how these things fit in one another.

Just arbitrarily bombing boats where there have been no names given of people on the boats.

They declare that they know who these terrorists are, these narco-terrorists as they've described them.

They say that they're coming toward the United States but we know when people who use these kinda cigarette boats would not be able to reach the shores of our nation.

So it's not an imminent threat and it's not a declared war.

So it just seems to me to be in conflict with common sense and the reality of any time you go to war.

- If the president can declare a suspected drug smuggler a military target without seeking approval from Congress or providing any evidence that they pose such a threat to the United States, are there any limits?

- Yeah, that's the key question for those of us in the military.

And I think that's what the debate is right now.

Was this a crime, a war crime, or following orders in an undeclared conflict?

There are so many ethical arguments that could be made in terms of what happened by the individuals who actually are pulling the triggers.

- General, walk me through something.

You and others have said that the Department of Defense Law of War Manual specifically refers to the firing upon the shipwreck as quote, "clearly illegal," which is an order that the military is required to disobey.

So realistically, how does that work?

If a commander orders a second strike to kill two shipwreck survivors and an individual does not wanna execute that order, what does a subordinate who receives that order do if they believe the order violates the law?

How does that actually work in real time?

- Well, when you're talking about the difference between the first strike and the second strike, where you can see if this is true in the film, and again, I haven't seen it.

If you can see on the film that these individuals are hors de combat, or outside the fight, and they're just hanging on for dear life, that's murder.

That is something that the United States military teaches you not to do.

So to go back to your question, what would an individual do in that case?

Well, they would first question the order.

Wait a minute, sir, whoever they're talking to, the superior, do you really want us to do this?

Isn't this violation of the law that we've been taught to ensure we obey?

And if the questioning doesn't work, then you go to a higher authority, the next level up in the chain of command.

Unfortunately, in this situation, you have the levels of chain of command, seemingly, and again, I'm speaking on conjecture, all of them approving this strike.

- You mentioned guardrails as one of the differences in the second Trump administration versus the first Trump administration's foreign policy.

It seems as though the congress has this week suggested that it may hold up the Secretary of Defense's travel budget until the second video is made available to some of the key committees.

Does that give you a degree of confidence that perhaps some guardrails or checks on the executive may be instituted or reinstituted?

- Well, it's an interesting approach, but truthfully, I'm a little bit more hardcore than that.

I would like for the Congress of the United States to do a whole lot more,.

Have some inquiries into everyone that was involved, not just Secretary Hegseth or Admiral Bradley, but others.

The former Special Operations Command Commander, General Fenton.

He would have had to have known about this.

And we are now seeing some questions being thrown at Admiral Holsey, who was the Southern Command Commander.

He's the guy that's responsible for the entire area of operation.

And we now understand that there was some huge contentious debates going on, not only between Admiral Holsey and Secretary Hegseth, but also between Admiral Holsey's lawyer, his staff judge advocate, and the general counsel in the Pentagon.

So what you're seeing is a bunch of different stories, advice being given, military advice being given to civilian leadership to the extent that it caused an individual to offer his retirement.

That tells me there's a whole lot of fire behind the smoke.

- I wanna turn to the National Security Strategy.

- [General Mark] Yeah.

- The Trump administration has recently released a new National Security Strategy.

This is a document that outlines the priorities and principles for its approach to foreign policy.

And you general have read many of these documents.

You have helped draft defense strategies based on them.

If President Trump's first National Security Strategy from 2017 could be boiled down to one line, you know, "America first, but not alone."

Based on what you understand about this document, what would be an apt one liner to describe the new National Security Strategy of the second Trump administration?

- Oh, wow.

Based on my read of it, it's "America only and everyone else supports us."

There were really some elements of this document that were telling other nations how they could better serve us.

So it was very transactional in nature as opposed to the first doctrine, the first National Security Strategy that was written by a friend of mine, H.R.

McMaster, when he was the National Security Advisor.

- This document, as I read it, it is noticeably devoid of principled arguments about American values.

The 2017 strategy that you just referenced, that was authored by General H.R.

McMaster, who was then the National Security Advisor to President Trump, it's grounded in the ideas that America's principles are a, quote, "lasting force for good in the world."

The new document, the new National Security Strategy of this Trump administration seems concerned with denouncing elites moving away from alliances, projecting power in the Western hemisphere.

Does the absence of values-based arguments for our strategy concern you?

- Absolutely.

And it should concern anyone that has studied American government, because we know that our ideology and our values drive our strategies, and our strategies drive our policies and approaches.

So, when you don't start off from a base of values, just like in corporate America, if your company doesn't have values, if you haven't determined what you want to be and how you want to act, the rest of it is, it doesn't matter.

One of the things that was in the strategy too is it talks about the relationship between ends and means, and it totally disregards the key element of strategy, and that's the ways you do things.

So if you have these end states of what you wanna accomplish, and you're talking about all the resources and people that are going to accomplish it, if you don't have the ways you're going to do it abiding by our values, then to me it's a bankrupt piece of paper.

- What are the values that are espoused in this new National Security Strategy?

- I couldn't find any, to be honest with you.

It was all very economically based, control of different parts of the world, telling others in different parts of the world how to run their governments and how they are about to, in fact, the statement about Europe is within 20 years, they are gonna be nothing like they've been over their last several centuries of existence.

So, those kinds of insults certainly don't correspond to the American value of respect for others, or an understanding of what others doing, or liberty or freedom are some of the values that are in our founding documents and that have been in our speeches throughout our ages, like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or Kennedy's inauguration or Roosevelt's four freedoms.

You can't see any of our values in the current National Security Strategy.

And if we're not living by our values, then we are going to turn away from who we are as a nation.

- The Trump administration calls for a, quote, "Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine."

The Monroe Doctrine, of course, refers to President James Monroe's 1823 doctrine that claimed the Western Hemisphere belonged to the United States' sphere of interest and warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

Now, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, famously conservative editorial board, says that this will, quote, "Please China and Russia, but discomfort America's allies."

So, why focus on peace in the Western Hemisphere when the greatest threats to global peace are elsewhere?

- I don't know the answer to that.

But the only thing I could consider is there is an approach toward various key powers in the world controlling a regional area of operation.

So it's regional hegemony.

It's what Iran has attempted to do in the Middle East.

It's what Russia has attempted to do in their sphere of influence.

It's what China has attempting to do in the Far East.

So it puts us in that position of being a regional hegemon for North and South America.

And you even see it in some of the changes within our military organization.

Just this week, there was a change of command at US Army Forces Command to make it called the Western Hemisphere Command.

That to me is a little bit troubling.

It appears that instead of looking at worldwide potential deployments that would stand for the values that we hold dear, we're focusing on just one part of the world.

- You know, it strikes me, General, and I'd like your reaction to this, that the new National Security Strategy also emphasizes peace.

But it doesn't clearly define the threats to peace nearly as clearly as the President Trump's first National Security Strategy did.

It outlined, in 2017, the revisionist powers, namely China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, the so-called access of authoritarians that are, by the way, coordinating even more today against American power than they were then.

It seems to me that those powers pose the biggest threat to global peace, and yet this National Security Strategy doesn't even mention North Korea.

It barely references Iran.

It calls for more stable relations with Russia.

Can Trump really cement his legacy as the president of peace without confronting the countries that threaten peace?

- Well, it's not only that Margaret.

I'll take it a little bit further and say, yes, all of those countries are dangerous and all of them are expanding in their approach to their global territory.

But what also isn't addressed are the potential coordination of other countries in areas like cyber, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation.

This perfect example is Russia.

They have wanted to divide the United States.

They have played an active part in doing that, as well as attempting to disrupt the NATO alliance.

They seem to be doing that very well with things like election interference in various countries, cyber conditions.

I'll give the example of Estonia, murdering people on foreign soil that affects governmental actions.

Those are the kinda things that they're not seen as tanks or artillery pieces rolling across borders, but they are going to be just as dangerous in the next several decades.

- Last week at the Ronald Reagan Defense Forum, Secretary Hegseth declared, quote, "The Monroe Doctrine is in effect and it is stronger than ever."

General, on the original "Firing Line" with William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1980, Buckley himself made the case for a similar position.

Take a look at this clip.

- It seems to me if we don't assert the Monroe Doctrine we are creating a vacuum into which we invite future Cubas.

It's easy enough to say the Cuba isn't in and of itself a threat, but it has certainly taken up a lot of our time during the past 15 or 20 years since the advent of Castro.

So, is there any reason why we shouldn't accept as a challenge for the '80s, the reposition of the Monroe Doctrine?

- William F. Buckley Jr.

made this argument at the height of the Cold War.

But there are conservatives today who argue that the United States does have a strong strategic interest in expanding our influence in our own hemisphere and countering China's presence in Latin America.

Do we?

- I think we have a strong requirement to counter any kind of malign influencers anywhere in the world.

People who try and take away liberty or freedoms or individual value in any nation or the choice that people have of electing their governments, then yeah, we have a responsibility to try and counter that.

But it's the way you do that that's important.

It isn't by driving people away or going in and killing people.

We've learned that lesson over and over again.

We should try, in my belief, to contribute to good governance in our partners and our allies.

Show them what that means and show what malign activities might do for democratic societies.

That's a different kind of approach.

You know, Mr.

Buckley said all that at the height of the Cold War, where a lot of Latin American and South American countries seem to be teetering between authoritarian governments and democracies.

And it may have been right for those coming out of colonial power and those who were trying to determine their future.

But I don't think it's right today.

We have a much different approach to governing and the way we interact with other nations, both our allies and our foes.

And I don't think any of that commentary from Mr.

Buckley should be applied today.

- General, just this week, the New York Times reported that President Trump announced that NVIDIA will be allowed to sell its second most powerful chip, semiconductor chip, known as the H-200, to China.

This is, you know, an act that could enable China to use American technology to gain military and economic advantage in artificial intelligence over the United States.

Now, the National Security Strategy's section on Taiwan says clearly, quote, "In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent large-scale military conflict."

Did President Trump's choice to sell semiconductors to China, some of America's best semiconductors to China, directly undermine the National Security Strategy that he published only days before?

- It certainly does countermand it.

But we're all assuming that President Trump, like his first term, actually read the National Security Strategy.

In this case, as in so many other cases, it appears we're seeing the president make decisions without the advice of his council, his cabinet members, because they're too busy promoting him and being sycophants in terms of what he's trying to do.

This is where it takes individuals standing up in a cabinet meeting or in face-to-face primary committees or deputy committees saying, this is not good for us.

But that doesn't seem to be happening.

- I mean, does the choice to sell H-200 chip, NVIDIA chips to China compromise American national security?

- Absolutely.

From everything I know about it, I am not a chip expert, but I know that there's a competition in this region.

And by selling our best to another country who is considered our competitor is not a good idea.

You wouldn't do that in business.

You shouldn't do that in government.

- So, why would President Trump so clearly compromise American national security on the heels of writing a document?

I mean, if he's so clearly going to undermine the principle he stated about ensuring that America has technological and economic superiority over China with respect to chips, and then to go just days later, sell those chips to the Chinese Communist Party, how do you square that?

- Well, you probably squared in the same way as you would square bombing small drug boats while releasing a major drug cartel leader in the president of Honduras.

These are actions that cause confusion, not only within our own government and the United States citizens, but they also cause a massive amount of confusion with our allies because they don't know what we're going to do next.

We may state something in our National Security Strategy, which is our approach, but then when the president does something that's completely contrary to that, it can only cause angst and confusion within our allies.

- With respect to Ukraine, the strategy asserts that the core interest of the United States is to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine in order to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.

Should reestablishing strategic stability with Russia be the key objective of our country?

- In my view, absolutely not.

The strategic stability of Russia is not something that we should be considering at all in these peace talks.

It should be the sovereign territory of Ukraine, the dynamic of President Zelensky actually governing his own country within their borders and also holding a war criminal at bay for what he was responsible for doing, which by last count was over 12,000 cited war crimes.

We're giving them an opportunity to be war criminals and invade another country by saying we're contributing to their stability.

That just doesn't make sense to me as a military guy.

- General, you have a forthcoming book that will be published this spring, "If I Don't Return."

This is a journal that you wrote for your sons when you were deployed to Iraq in the 1990s and your sons are now veterans themselves.

In this moment of tension and uncertainty for Americans and also for the American military, how are the lessons that you imparted to your sons significant now?

- Well, the original was for our sons, Margaret.

The next copy is for our five grandsons because that's what one of our sons asked me to do, to take what I wrote back in 1990 and '91 and apply it to the rest of my life and give the same kind of reflections on topics that I've observed over four decades in the military.

So I traced the kinds of things I talked about in 1990 all the way through my retirement and then beyond in new reflections.

And hopefully what it talks about and the gift I'm trying to give is an understanding of character leadership, patriotism, smaller dynamics like what goes on in the army when they go to war, how you should love your wife and your family.

Because I wanted our sons, if I didn't return, to know how to be men.

Well, I did return.

That's the spoiler alert of the book.

And so, I'm trying now to give new advice to a new generation.

And I finished the last chapter with some thoughts on a long chapter on leadership and also MacArthur's prayer to his sons, which talks about what kind of person you should be in your life to make your parents proud.

So that's what I try to do in this book and I'm excited for it to come out.

- Well, we look forward to it and I hope you'll return to Firing Line when it does.

General Mark Hertling, thank you for your service to our country and thank you for joining me here on Firing Line.

- It was a pleasure, Margaret, and thank you for having me.

- [Announcer] Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness.

And by the following.

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