Coercion and Attrition | Interview: Ken Pollack

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**Jonah Goldberg** (0:05)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:08)
Lima.

**Ken Pollack** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish? Dónde está el baño?
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:17)
Technically, no.

**Ken Pollack** (0:18)
Spiritually, yes.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**Ken Pollack** (0:23)
That's one of life's biggest questions.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:25)
What do you think? Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.
Latte for Keenan?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:33)
That's me.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:33)
Hey, you're...

**SPEAKER_4** (0:35)
Yeah. Buying a car online on Auto Trader? Really?

**Jonah Goldberg** (0:38)
But unlike other sites, you can start online, test drive with a local dealer, then finish online or at the dealership. Really?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:45)
Wait, are you...

**Jonah Goldberg** (0:46)
Yep, it's Keenan.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:46)
able to finish in person without starting the process over?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:49)
Really?

**Jonah Goldberg** (0:49)
Your info stays with you every step of the way.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:52)
Cool. Enjoy.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:54)
It's Keenan Thompson.

**Jonah Goldberg** (0:55)
Buy your car online on Auto Trader. Really?
Ladies and gentlemen...

**SPEAKER_1** (1:16)
Can I please have your attention?

**Jonah Goldberg** (1:27)
Greetings, dear listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of The Remnant Podcast, brought to you by The Dispatch and Dispatch Media. We've had a lot of requests for a return of today's guest for...
Let's just say obvious reasons. And I will say, I think you've all lived in is still.
Probably the number one spot of guests that I will repeat I don't think. I can immediately quote or reference what they've said in the past, but in the six months or so since the Iraq, I mean since the Iran War started, I would say I've begun a really large number of sentences with, as Ken Pollack said at the very beginning of all of this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So Ken Pollack is back. He's the Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. He's a former colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute. Besides MEI and AEI, there are other three-letter agencies that he has been involved with in various places. But we'll just leave it at that. Author of many books and working on a new one, which is called or will be about?

**Ken Pollack** (2:30)
The Iraq Wars, which is about the history of the US and Iraq, the whole thing, whole enchilada, out in February.

**Jonah Goldberg** (2:37)
On the one hand, I really, for you, because I'm a mensch, I hope there's something going on in the news that makes it really timely and commercial. But as an American, I have a competing impulse about that. But maybe it doesn't have to be a monkey paw wish.
All right, so Ken, how's the war going?

**Ken Pollack** (2:59)
When you brought me on the show, I was told that we were going to be talking about football. If I had known that you wanted to talk about the war with Iran, I would have reconsidered the war.

**Jonah Goldberg** (3:08)
I had to say what I had to say to get you on.

**Ken Pollack** (3:11)
Yeah, I guess. Well, first, let me say, it's always great to be with you. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of the pod, so always delighted to be your guest. And if I'm second most requested after Yuval, wow, I've really done something good. Because Yuval is my first request after Chris Steyerwald made. The war is in a very problematic phase, as I think everyone recognizes. It is worth saying, we have done a lot of damage to the Iranian military. So let's always hold that aside. That is out there. How long lasting that damage will be, that's part of the question. But of course, we're in a very difficult situation. And the way that I've been describing it recently is that the problem is we've now gotten ourselves into a coercive war of attrition.
That's a really bad place to be. Coercive wars are always very, very difficult to win. Explain that in just a second. Wars of attrition, very difficult to win. Both take long periods of time. The attrition piece is kind of obvious, right? Attrition, you're just doing incremental damage to each other over the course of time. You're not hitting big blows. You're not doing big amounts of damage that can be psychologically dislocating, cause collapse of morale. You're just kind of eroding each other, which again makes it hard to resolve. Both sides typically think they can bear their pain.
The course of side is just as bad, because ultimately the course of peace is about trying to push your adversary past their own pain threshold.