Hal Kempfer Returns: Analyzing Global Risks and Remembering a Friend

Howard the Announcer: 00:00:02

From the Mutual Broadcasting System, this is STRAT - Strategic Risk Assessment Talk.

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When the world at odds and risks run high, tune in each week where insights never lie. STRAT to show on wars and peace. From conflicts old to new, crises unleashed, threats unfold.

But how can braving stories bold, from espionage to economic might bring perspective see the light? Every week across the globe, we spin decoding gray zones where battles often begin.

Howard the Announcer: 00:00:52

Now, retired marine intelligence officer and globally recognized risk expert, Hal Kemper. Well,

Hal Kempfer, Host: 00:01:00

Welcome to STRAT - Strategic risk Assessment talk. This is Hal Kemper, your host.

And after a long pause, we are starting up the Strat podcast again, and I hope you enjoy it. We have a little. Well, I should explain the we part first off, but there's a little bit different format. All right.

We is basically the team we have that puts these together. But before I say anything more for those who have listened to strat in the past, you remember my partner, Mark Mansfield.

He and I are business partners. We go back a long way, friends, and sadly, tragically, he passed away at Christmas and caught all of us by surprise.

The last person you would have thought would pass away, he was. As far as we knew, he was in great physical shape. He used to go run at noon with weight vests on.

I mean, he just was somebody you wouldn't expect something to happen to. And he. He just suddenly passed away due to natural causes. And we're all still somewhat stunned and shocked by what happened there.

I just want to say that I certainly value every day that I've known Mark. He made an incredible imprint on so many different things, but definitely all who knew him, his family, also everybody who's listened to him.

And I have literally traveled around the world doing major corporate war games and other events with him, and he's touched a lot of people with his wisdom, his insight, his good nature, if you will. I don't, you know, there probably won't any, ever be anybody quite like Mark.

Of course, as we've talked about on the show before, a former canadian navy officer, and certainly between him being Canadian Navy and my being a US Marine, we go back and forth on that, as you can well imagine, just a tremendous intellect and Harvard MBA, investment banker. That's why we've taken such a long period of time here.

To really come back and get this going again is because we weren't quite sure where we're going to go with this. It's going to be a little bit different format.

Anyway, I'm going to carry on in the spirit of certainly what Mark would hope, I assume he would hope I would want to keep doing. And we're going to talk about what's going on around the world. I'm going to talk about some of the strategic implications.

I'm going to start probably where all the news starts today. I'm going to talk about the Middle east with Israel basically dealing with essentially a forefront war right now, and I'll talk about that.

Then I'm going to turn to Europe, talk about Russia, Ukraine, talk a little bit about what's happening in Asia, the South China Sea, talk about some of the things in Africa, the western hemisphere. I'm gonna make a little reference to some of the gray zone activities going on out there, what was sometimes called hybrid warfare.

Certainly the, the world of espionage falls into that. And, of course, terrorism throughout. I'll be talking about various macroeconomic trends, news implications of what's being done.

So let's, let's go ahead and start talking about the Middle east. As some of you know, I, I appear regularly on Fox Live now.

That's their digital streaming news network and also news nation and a variety of Fox News stations and other media, NPR and others on a regular basis.

For those who have been following me on those, you know, I've been talking about what's happening in the Middle East a lot, and part of that is Israel versus, first it was Hamas, then one could say it was the Houthis and Hezbollah. But throughout all this has been Iran and, of course, Iran. When you talk about the axis of resistance, iranian backed proxies.

Well, you can't have iranian backed proxies, unless, of course, you have Iran. Some of you know that Iran launched another onslaught of ballistic missiles into Israel, basically almost a replay of what they did last April.

Fortunately, they were not very successful in getting through, and they didn't cause any israeli casualties per se, although there was a palestinian woman in the West bank that was tragically killed by falling debris from one of the ballistic missiles.

But the Iron Dome did what it was supposed to do, albeit with that said, as more information comes out, we realize that Iran had changed their ballistic missile tactics and that actually more missiles were able to get further and got through to some places than originally thought.

But fortunately, there was no israeli loss of life, nor was there any significant damage to buildings or structures, but there were some warheads that actually did get through. Why is this big? Well, what's big now is that, of course, this is basically uncorked, if you will, a potential escalation of events.

Israel certainly has the right, if nothing the obligation to respond to what just happened. They did respond to what happened last April, and they did it in a very unusual way.

They did a very limited strike on a radar facility in a very sensitive area in Iran, an area that the Iranians probably thought was impervious to airstrike. And it was to make a statement. And the statement to Iran was, we can get into these places and we can strike you where you think you can't be struck.

And obviously, that message has been lost on, you know, Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader over there, although he did obviously listen to a little bit of it because shortly after the strike took place, he immediately went into hiding. So obviously, he did know that Israel had some pretty long arm, if you will, that could strike.

And, of course, this is after Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, had been killed, assassinated, if you will, in a massive strike in southern Beirut. There's been a number of senior leadership figures in Hezbollah and Hamas taken out on a regular basis.

It looks like Nasrallah's heir apparent may have just been taken out in a strike. So let's just say Israel has some capabilities in that regard. Right now. The question is, what is Israel going to do?

They could go after the nuclear facilities in Iran. That, of course, could cause a major escalation in the conflict beyond where it is now.

Although I would point out, because of how Iran has its nuclear facilities arrayed, they would probably have to have a rather protracted series of strikes. And more importantly, they would have to do what's called a destruction of enemy air defense or dead.

Dead is the name of that particular tactical evolution.

And so they would basically, it wouldn't be just suppressing, but it would be actually the destruction of their air defenses, which would provide a permissive strike zone, if you will, in a number of areas which would allow multiple strikes, multiple sorties to come in to take out a lot of different things.

And, of course, it would actually create a situation there where Iran would feel extremely vulnerable, and that could have potential political implications in Iran.

And I should also mention that Netanyahu has reached out to the iranian people in a recent broadcast trying to separate their interests from the interests of the theocratic, autocratic regime. And that was a rather interesting, if you will, strategic communication that took place. So we'll see if that happens.

I will say one thing, though, that when Israel had retaliated against a strike that came from the houthi rebels down in Yemen, they went after not just where the missiles were launched from, but they went after a key port, a couple of key ports, and they went after the way that they get their armaments in from Iran. They went after some of the critical infrastructure, the supply chain, if you will, in terms of shutting that down to some degree.

And so that's something that's being discussed with Iran and the implication there is they might look at reports, they might also look at oil.

And President Biden at first had talked about the possibility of Iran striking oil, and that would be things like refineries and other oil facilities. The market reacted with a big jump in oil prices.

And so he just came out and said, no, maybe they shouldn't strike the oil because he realized what he did, causing a price shock. But interestingly, there's a lot of things there that have some fairly significant implications.

And of course, the other side is depending on what's done there, could turn the persian gulf into a body of water with the same problems that we are seeing, say, around the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Babelmandeb Strait, with the Houthis, only more so.

And so there, there are major macroeconomic implications, supply chain implications, potential price shock implications, particularly with oil and gas, depending on what happens next. And that's something that we're going to have to be watching very, very closely. But the market is reacting to whatever's done there in a major way.

So that's some of the stuff on the Middle east. Obviously, I shouldn't ignore what's happening in Gaza with Hamas, number of leaders taken out.

And interestingly, it's Yaya Sinwar, the du jour and certainly de facto head of Hamas, who is in hiding somewhere, probably in some tunnel, had been out of contact for a long period of time. In fact, looking at some of the open source reports out there, it is still not clear to me if anybody has actually communicated with him in weeks.

There's a lot of reports that he is moving around, that he's relying on couriers. But there's still this persistent report that there has been no communication with him, certainly by Hamas, and say Doha in Qatar for some time.

So his status is unclear. And there may be deeper problems with the command structure within Hamas than are being publicly appreciated. So that's a major issue there.

Now here's an interesting thing that a lot of folks may have missed is what is the situation with Turkey? As you know, Turkey has been very critical of how Israel has gone into Gaza.

There's been tremendous strain certainly in the rhetoric between Turkey and Israel. Yet Turkey is a regional player.

Their regional player is aligned more or less on the sunni side of Islam, and they see Iran as a strategic competitor. Yet at the same time, they have a lot of affinity and support for the Palestinians.

So there's this rather unusual situation where they ostensibly support the palestinian cause, the concept of palestinian statehood. What they see is perhaps Israel using tactics, operations, weapons in an overbearing way in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

On the other hand, they also see Israel providing a strategic check, if you will, against Iran.

And so they will certainly call for ceasefire, certainly call for a number of things, but they have to balance that with, they would certainly like to see Iran have its power and influence in the region vastly diminished, and Israel is providing a way to do that right now. So rather interesting, and I bring that up because Turkey is a NATO country.

It is the only NATO country that really is, has a footprint in the Middle east. And the way it does, you know, certainly that's always been the crossroads. That's where Europe and Asia meets.

So it is a rather interesting situation with Turkey, and they've been absolutely instrumental in dealing with some of the counter mine operations, basically helping to put a check on the russian navy and the Black Sea and elsewhere. And, of course, Russia is more or less aligned with Iran. They have a very close strategic relationship right now.

So it is interesting to see how Erdogan and Turkey are dealing with this situation as it unfolds. And obviously, there's a fear of bleed over this conflict that it could cause more problems throughout the Middle east.

But, you know, I have to tell you, having been talking about this since it began, the focus had always been on talking about possible expansion and stuff. One thing we may see, though, is the possibility of Hezbollah doing something here.

They have been operating certainly in the western hemisphere of Europe, all over the world for quite some time. So we may see something akin to that. And everybody is leaning forward on the potential threat of terrorism that could come out of this.

So let's talk about what's going on in Europe. Obviously, President Zelensky went and spoke before the United nations. He's got a victory plan that he's been pushing out there.

A lot of the victory plan seems to be centered on getting permission to use western supplied long range weapons, like longer range attack of missiles and storm shadow cruise missiles from the west, to hit very much deep inside russian territory. That permission has not been granted yet. I don't know when that will be.

There is certainly concerns in the White House that this could escalate, and the concern is that Russia might feel at some point the necessity to uncork the nuclear genie, or at least the tactical nuclear genie, whether that be a demonstration explosion or to start doing underground testing of nuclear weapons or whatever it is, to basically escalate this matter more.

Although if they go that direction, they're going to cause some real tension and problems with China, and they're going to cause some tension to China with what we call the global south. They certainly don't want to see something like that happen, and it could really set back their strategic position a lot of different ways.

So that is something that is currently ongoing. Now, Russia is making modest gains in the eastern front. That seems to be slowing down a bit.

And keep in mind winter is coming, so that may slow down more.

Also, Ukraine got some very good drone strikes, caused some major damage at russian arms depots, and literally, from what they could figure out, took out a couple of months worth of artillery shells, much of that supplied by North Korea.

And so everyone's kind of waiting to see if the artillery tempo, if you will, the usage rate of artillery shells by the Russians starts to diminish going forward. And that's a very significant possibility. If that happens, the Russians are going to have some serious problems.

Of course, the Ukrainians went up into Kursk Oblast, which is a russian province, if you will, north the ukrainian border, and they seem to be pretty much holding their own there. The Russians have tried counterattacks.

There's some areas where the Russians made some progress, but those are areas where I don't think the Ukrainians had any intention of holding those areas. They simply traded terrain in order to inflict a lot of casualties, a lot of attrition on the russian forces.

And in one famous case, the Russians actually had one of their own armored company, plus battalion sized units rolled into and got caught in an old russian obstacle belt, one that they had built before the Ukrainians went up to Kursk that was supposed to keep the Ukrainians out. Didn't do that.

But the Russians attacked and went into their own obstacle belt, got stuck, and then the Ukrainians were able to cause heavy attrition on their forces. So very interesting. What's going on with that across the board. And. And then, of course, we're also seeing some things happening in Europe. Hungary.

The political director under Orban came out and said something rather interesting that he was talking about. Basically said, you know, Ukraine got into this problem because they didn't let the Russians basically invade and take over their country.

posed the russian invasion in: 1956

It's been a thorn in the side of not just NATO, but the European Union. But even Orban was quick to recognize that this was just too much. There were calls for the. Certainly for him to fire that political director.

It was a very strange situation, but it did happen and coincide was something similar in Georgia. And I was surprised that this wasn't really connected to the news in Georgia. And I'm not talking about the one in the southeastern United States.

I'm talking about Georgia, former soviet republic. They had a sign, road signs put up by the leading political party there, which is ostensibly, shall we say, leaning towards Russia. Pro Putin.

Pro Russia in a lot of ways, which has really caused problems with pro democracy movement and the other political parties in Georgia.

Well, they put this sign up showing a devastated area of Ukraine, and kind of in the same way they were saying, look, Georgia shouldn't have opposed russian invasion, where Russia went in and took a couple of oblast or province areas in northern Georgia. It was interesting to see that and then juxtapose that against what was just said in Hungary.

It appears to look like a coordinated russian disinformation or information operation, a coordinated narrative of basically trying to push the idea that you shouldn't resist russian invasions. Very strange thing. Of course, the hope was that Georgia would eventually become a member of the European Union and NATO.

That's not happening anytime soon, obviously, with at least in the current political environment. And of course, Hungary or bond is going to have to try and figure out some way to fix this.

Another issue going on around the world is dark tankers, fears of these poorly maintained tankers in the Baltic, in Asia, the Quad, Japan, India, Australia. The US is still informal relationship, but getting stronger.

And there's now major, major multinational western US US is involved exercise going on there. At the same time, China's put out a major exercise in the area, and there's still tremendous tension in that area. In Sudan, civil war in Africa.

We've seen the government forces actually moving into Khartoum to take some forces away from the anti government militias. And then, of course, the interesting thing, and this is, I'm going to kind of finish with this.

I spent some quality time back in the eighties stationed on a little island, or I should say archipelago, a toll, if you will, in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia, and it is a british overseas territory. We have a very large or significant us military presence there, strategic presence there.

However, it is part of the Mauritius chain of islands and Mauritius has always claimed that it is part of their sovereign territory. Well, they just reached an agreement. Great Britain is going to hand over sovereignty to Mauritius.

In exchange for that, Mauritius going to provide a long term agreement on allowing that base to continue. But the rule of unintended consequences.

Argentina is looking at this saying, hey, we've been saying the same thing about the Falklands, which they call the Malvinas for quite some time. And you may recall in the early eighties, they actually did a big military operation to try and take the Falklands and the Brits took it back.

But now that's raising the issue of british overseas territories. And Argentina, this is becoming part of the current thing we're seeing down South America, talking about the Falklands.

I don't think this will lead to another Falklands war, but it is certainly fascinating situation that is a quick run around the world. Talk about supply chains, oil, gas, a variety of different things.

Certainly a very different format, I think, from what Mark and I used to talk about, although every single day I wish Mark and was here and we could continue to talk about what we talk about, but strat is continuing. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and I am certainly looking forward to whatever happens going forward.

And I will try and do these on a regular basis where I basically just go through and talk about these things, talk about what's happening around the world and try to connect some dots, if you will, and try to put some perspective on it and not ignore things that unfortunately, in broadcast news, there's a lot of stuff that just can't be addressed. And part of Strat is to address some of those issues that maybe don't get enough of a look or don't get a look at all.

And the dominant mainstream media. So thank you very much.

Song Artist: 00:19:38

STRAT, where local friends unfold with Hal Kempfer, braving stories fold from their speed onage to economic might king perspective see the light? Every week across the globe, we spin to coding gray zones where battles often begin.