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Success and Failure in the Israel Defense Forces
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Success and Failure in the Israel Defense Forces

Speaker: Eitan Shamir

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Eitan Shamir

Topic: Success and Failure in the Israel Defense Forces
Bio: Former head of the National Security Doctrine Department at the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs
Reading: The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the Israel Defense Forces is here

Transcript:

Larry Bernstein:

Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and war.

Today’s topic is Success and Failure in the Israel Defense Forces.

Our speaker is Eitan Shamir who is the former head of the National Security Doctrine Department at the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He is also the co-author of the book entitled The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the Israel Defense Forces.

I want to learn from Eitan how Israel was asleep at the switch on 10/7, and how the IDF has adapted to the complex military operation that is ongoing in Gaza.

Buckle up!

Eitan can you please begin with your opening six-minute remarks.

Eitan Shamir:

Why is that the small, poor Israeli armed forces have been exceptionally innovative decade after decade? They originated new tactics in the air, at sea for commander raids, and for armored warfare.

All innovation is necessity. In Israel's case, war is a present danger. The urgency means addressing battlefield needs as they arise and short periods from idea to operational use. Iron Dome was developed and fielded in four years against the average 15 years it usually takes to developing new missile systems.

Cost is another factor. Being poor can be an advantage. It forces you not to keep adding new costly features that will eventually result in overpriced systems that are impossible to purchase and maintain.

There was also the issue of embargo. There were no external sources which forced Israel to innovate. Israel faced many years with limited access to military equipment as the U.S. and other western countries refused to sell weapons to Israel.

Israel is a nation in arms. The developers are soldiers, and their kids will use what they develop. Oftentimes, a reservist will come back from service with an idea and will pursue it.

There is an open-door policy. Israel is a casual society. Everyone can easily get to everyone. So, ideas can surface bottom-up. Low ranking soldiers and officers approach their superiors with ideas and then receive support for it. These factors combined explain the remarkable innovation of the IDF throughout its relatively short history.

Larry Bernstein:

How could the Israelis have been surprised and successfully attacked by unsophisticated terrorists using bulldozers, drones, and gliders? What happened?

Eitan Shamir:

We should never underestimate our opponents. We are not dealing here with some militants running around with rifles. What was demonstrated on the 7th was a lot of innovation from the other side.

We must give them credit; these people are learning. Hamas is a sophisticated organization. They were able to surprise Israel.

Larry Bernstein:

Was the 10/7 failure caused by overconfidence or hubris? Was Hamas perceived not to be a strategic threat? Did the Israel military believe that Hamas was incapable of putting an attack like this together and therefore Israel should employ its defense against other threats? To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, “Was this attack a known-unknown?”

Eitan Shamir:

I was speaking with one of the major generals I know in the Israeli defense forces a few days after the attack, he said to me, “what our problem is that we suffer from a lack of imagination.” The assumption that Hamas is the most primitive opponent that Israel is facing. Israel is facing a serious threat from the north, from Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has said repeatedly and openly that it is going to do what Hamas has done, to send its elite forces to capture Israeli military strong points, villages, and kibbutzim The whole attention was focused to the north.

Hamas played along that it is rebuilding the Gaza economy and society. The Israelis had the wrong impression that the tiger is tamed and sleepy, it is not going anywhere. And even though there were intelligence reports describing exactly what Hamas is going to do, the idea was that they are far from being able to exercise it.

Larry Bernstein:

Let us compare October 7th in Gaza with Pearl Harbor. Immediately after the Japanese surprise attack, the US Congress made a declaration of war that was nearly unanimous and that was followed-up by thousands of Americans volunteering to fight. The country went from being isolationist to a great military power overnight. Tell us about the shift in the Israeli psychology from being a country at peace to one at war.

Eitan Shamir:

There is the Israel before the 7th, and there is Israel after the 7th. And there is a remarkable difference. Israel is aspiring to be Athens, but it is forced to be Sparta. Israel felt confident in the last few years. The Abraham Accords and the high-tech boom. Defense spending of Israel came down to less than 4% of the GDP, which is remarkably low in Israel's history.

The quality of life in Israel became like European. And now everyone understands that we are going to invest in the military. You see the eulogies that mothers are talking over the graves of their fallen soldiers. The government was reluctant to go into Gaza in 2014 and 2008 because the military said that we might lose 500 soldiers in such an operation.

Today nobody talks about casualties. It's obvious that you have to sacrifice. Israel has completely changed itself. The comparison that you're making to Pearl Harbor and how it changed the mood in America is very true.

Americans also did not think about the Japanese capabilities, their military skills, the other side exploiting your weaknesses.

Hamas knew that the IDF and the Israeli intelligence is monitoring them. They were able to do a good job keeping the secret of when the operation is going to happen to a select group until the last moment. They avoided using electronics, computers, digital information. What they do is they have the men at 5:00 AM coming to pray in the mosque every day. And in the mosque, you tell them word of mouth. They're already organized in small cells and the Kalashnikov, and the RPG is in the house. Now the IDF soldiers are finding it under the beds of the children.

It's not the Syrian army that if you want to move five divisions, you have to take a few days to shift the logistics and to put the tanks in place and all of that. No, it is very nimble, very agile. And they were able to pull it together very nicely.

Larry Bernstein:

Next topic is the failure in human intelligence. Our American audience watched the TV show Fauda, which showed the strength of Israeli intelligence. How did the Mossad and military intelligence blow this so badly with this surprise Hamas attack?

Eitan Shamir:

Apparently, it was not infiltrated good enough. Gaza is a closed place. Like how do you recruit Iranians? You see them when they are outside Iran and then recruit them. The same with the West Bank. The West Bank is more open. Gaza is the problem; it is closed.

The human factor, this is the weakest link of intelligence in Gaza. They have some pinpoint tactical success to find this person or that person and take them out. But, the IDF has not been able to find the abducted or the top leaders of Hamas.

Larry Bernstein:

There is now a war in Gaza under urban conditions with tunnels, drones, and booby traps, how is the IDF innovating?

Eitan Shamir:

Urban fighting is an exceedingly difficult and messy business. In Gaza it is even more challenging because of the tunnels. And Hamas is also using drones. There is the subterrain, you clear an area, and you move in and then suddenly from your rear, soldiers come out from the tunnels. This is a huge challenge which the IDF is facing.

Larry Bernstein:

There has been chatter in the press about flooding the tunnels, does that make any sense?

Eitan Shamir:

Israel has many problems which are unique, and you do not have off-the-shelf solutions. There is the combat engineering elite unit Yalom that is specializing in tunnel warfare. In 2019 there were huge tunnels that were discovered from Lebanon to Israel to serve Hezbollah's forces. Israel avoided the disaster by discovering these tunnels and destroying them. Now in Gaza, it's very easy to dig tunnels because the soil is very sandy.

Larry Bernstein:

Next topic is the Israeli war plan. Will it be house-to-house like Anthony King mentioned on a previous podcast, and how quick will Israeli ground forces call in air strikes? And what military innovations are you seeing in the fight?

Eitan Shamir:

Hamas was preparing for the IDF invasion in Gaza. Every school, every mosque, every hospital, every second building has rockets inside, has munitions, guns. A lot were booby trapped. Leveling these houses if there were Hamas’ fighters inside, they were killed.

Israel was calling for the population to leave the area by creating humanitarian corridors. And once the fighting began it experienced similar fighting like in Mosul or Fallujah, the result was the same because the fighting is from house-to-house.

Whether you level it before or whether you fight when your forces are inside. And you ask about innovation, the IDF was working to improve collaboration, what they call joint hands between the air force and the ground forces trying to minimize the cycle between the identification of a target and calling for a precision strike with a missile. Mostly it's coming from the air, either from drones or from jets. We see a very good payoff; targets were identified by the ground forces exposing the Hamas fighters then calling for a very accurate strike and destroying the fighter.

Larry Bernstein:

Why now? Why did Hamas decide to attack Israel on 10/7?

Eitan Shamir:

I think they saw what happened to Israel domestically, internally, the political rift. And they thought Israel is weak. This is a good time to attack Israel because Israel is split. Some of the pilots refused to fly. Some of the reservists said they will not join a campaign.

What they did get right beyond any expectation was the success they had on the 7th in terms of killing Israelis, kidnapping many more people than they hoped for. What they didn't get right, they had units that were supposed to go deeper into Israel. We saw their operational plans when they were captured or killed.

They hoped to fight back. To resist or to hold military outposts that they were able to capture for a few hours. They were hoping to stay there for at least a few days and to repel the IDF attempts to recapture it.

Now, in terms of the response into Gaza, I do not think that they believed that the IDF will go for full ground operation with all its might with the objective to completely destroy Hamas. They were hoping this victory of the first hours will energize other forces around Israel. They called the Israeli Arabs, take a knife and go kill Israelis.

They were hoping for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise, and they were hoping for Hezbollah to join in.

They had all these people they abducted. The international experts told me on the first days that Israel will not be able to launch a serious military campaign because of hostages’ families. Israel will go immediately into negotiation with Hamas. And I said to them, “No, you don't understand the mood here. We are going to launch a serious offensive into Gaza with the objective of destroying Hamas.”

Larry Bernstein:

Who got called up to serve in Gaza?

Eitan Shamir:

There are people my age who are still serving with their field units. I was in my bed Saturday, 7th October. My daughter who just finished her military service, all her friends are in special operation units. They go to the pub; they were all together throughout the night. In the morning they got the call to report to the units and she drove them to some of the meeting points. And then she came home, and she woke me up.

She said, “daddy, get up. We have a war.” She knows Gaza. Rockets here, rockets there. We are used to it. No, this was something different.

Larry Bernstein:

Everyone in Israel is a member of the IDF and its reserves. The IDF is a people’s national army that brings strengths and weaknesses. If you call up the reserves the economy cannot function for long. The reservists bring to the army skills and knowledge. They also will not tolerate bullshit.

Eitan Shamir:

As you said, everyone is involved. There is a professional core, career officers and top generals. We have the conscripts. It's a training period for your entire life service in the reserve.

I can tell you that the professional army do not like the reservist because it's the reservist who are pointing at them with criticism. The reservists have this mentality of, okay, you are calling me, do not waste my time on nonsense. I left my job; I left my home. I am coming to do the reserve. Then if you need to train me, train me. But do not waste my time. Some of them are officers and they are doing jobs. Some of them are CEOs, some of them high tech entrepreneurs, they know something about decision-making, and they know also about the military.

It is hard for every military when the bulk of the military are reservists. It is hard to maintain the same level of proficiency and training. But reservists they are very resourceful. They come with a lot of ideas. They are very committed. They can organize things that the usual military is not able to do. Innovation, a lot of them are coming from the military industry are coming back and from their reserve duty to their laboratories and they are the one who are developing the best equipment.

Larry Bernstein:

The thesis of your book is that Israel has such a small army, but it is so powerful and innovative. What is unsaid here is that all able-bodied men and women serve in the armed forces. Three years for men and nearly two years for women. And then for decades, the men are in the reserves for a month a year. This is a huge cost to society. Your children are serving in the IDF, and my kids are attending college learning about the arts and cognitive science.

Eitan Shamir:

You decided you want to live in the Middle East, then you must understand it is a constant struggle, constant fight. People asking a very Western way, “When will we see the end of it?”

No, you're not going to see the end of it, because regardless of Israel, if you look around in the Middle East, countries are constantly fighting, wars and killing. And this is the neighborhood. It is what it is. But having said that, Israel is doing the best of the situation.

Larry Bernstein:

Do soldiers benefit from serving in the IDF?

Eitan Shamir:

The gains that you get from high level education and especially in the good US university, it's true. On the other hand, I see young people in the West that are not sure what to do with themselves in real life, they have very little experience. And this is the stuff that the military provides you especially the high-tech sector in Israel.

If you come from Unit A-200 and you go through the whole cyber program and you get all the experience and training, what you do in six months there, you do in three years in the university. I can assure you that because they study like in Yeshiva from the morning to the evening, and then they get an exam every week. And if you fail, you are out. And the motivation is skyrocketing. Companies like Checkpoint were established by people in the military. Because the military gives you room and to experiment. And you look at Israel's leadership in the academy, business, and politics. It is not a waste of time.

Larry Bernstein:

How do you compare the training and experience in the IDF with a college experience in the US?

Eitan Shamir:

It depends. It's about your experiences whether you are in a combat support role, combat role. You are just working in an office, you are in a special unit like intelligence, or special forces. And the same with university. If you are studying applied mathematics, physics, it's one experience. And if you go to Harvard and a community college in some remote place, then it's a very different experience.

You are groomed to serving the IDF and you start to prepare when you are in high school. They go with a lot of pride and high expectations. Today there is a whole process of negotiation with the military to where do you fit and where do you want to serve and what are your options. And there's transparency of your options. When they're in 11th grade, you sit for exams, psychometric exams and interviews.

Then you go for courses and special training before the military service between the high school and the military. Many aspire to become officers. In the US when you go to West Point, it means that you think about becoming an officer for 25 years.

In the IDF, they become an officer to serve another year or two to do what there is in Hebrew to do a meaningful service. This generation they say, “I'm giving you a contribution, but I want something back. What do I want back? I want my development. Either soft skills like leadership, communication to show on my resume when I come out or hard skills like computers. I can go on and continue my civilian life with good qualifications.

Larry Bernstein

At the beginning of the State of Israel in 1948, Prime Minister Ben Gurion made the decision to keep the Ultra-Orthodox, the black hats, exempt from the IDF. At the time there were a few thousand but today the Ultra-Orthodox are 13% of the Israeli Jewish population and growing. It is unsustainable for the secular Jews to defend the deeply religious Jews.

There have been reports that the Ultra-Orthodox have signed up to defend Israel during the Gaza War.

Eitan Shamir:

What we saw since the seventh is very encouraging because we saw a lot of expression of support and empathy. For example, usually they're not praying for the safety of the state and Israeli soldiers. There were a lot of demonstration of support from them.

And when someone from the community enlisted in the IDF, he will come back home. So, the neighbors not to see, he will take off his uniform and put on his Ultra-Orthodox black uniform outfit. And you started to see soldiers from the Ultra-Orthodox, those few who did enlist going back to their neighborhoods proud. And they would be cheered. This was immensely encouraging. However, since then the IDF has not seen flocking of Ultra-Orthodox to the recruitment office.

Larry Bernstein:

Why do the ultra-orthodox rabbis discourage religious young men from joining the IDF? Are they afraid that it will expose them to the secular world? Is it because it interferes with studying the Torah? Do they want to prevent interactions between religious men and attractive secular Jewish women with the potential consequence that they would abandon a religious way of life because of temptation?

Eitan Shamir:

I would say it's 80% by being exposed to modern society, being tempted to leave the community, understanding that they have other options than the ultra-orthodox life that is offered to them. The Orthodox society is obeying its rabbis. And the way the rabbis control this community is by making sure that there are thick walls between this community and the rest of society. That is why the military is such a big threat on their way of life, at least in the eyes of their rabbis.

The rest of the reasons are just excuses.

Larry Bernstein:

150,000 Israeli citizens who live in the north of Israel near the Lebanese border have evacuated their homes and are currently living in central Israel. This is an untenable situation for Israel, you cannot have that many people living away from their homes for long.

Fighting with Hezbollah might escalate at any time. Sometimes countries fight two fronts, but one sector is hot and the other is cold until the military objectives in the first sector are met. In World War 2, the Germans defeated Poland in 1939 before turning on the French in June 1940.

Is Israel waiting to clean-up and stabilize the situation with Hamas in Gaza before escalating the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon?

Eitan Shamir:

Hezbollah has a different strategic calculus. They have an obligation to the Iranians. I do not think the Iranians want to use them for an all-out war now. It costs a lot to build Hezbollah. I think the instructions from Iran is not escalation.

Hezbollah is part of Lebanon. There are the Shiites in Lebanon, and Lebanon is in trouble. The country is fragile, and they will be accused of dragging Lebanon into war. So, their situation is quite complicated.

Israel's objectives are much more limited here. It is not about destroying Hezbollah; it's not about eliminating it like it'll be impossible, and the cost will be enormous. But for this limited objective, you might have to clash much more seriously with Hezbollah.

There was a dilemma whether to go directly into Gaza and attack Hezbollah.

Netanyahu vetoed this because the magnitude of the mission there is big enough, and because the U.S. asked him not to do it. So, the current thinking is to take a breath, understand what is going on in Gaza and contain the situation in the North, even though the cost of those people who left their homes, it's not easy.

But strategically, this is the right choice on the national level to absorb it. And then once we finish the mission in Gaza, then to give diplomacy a chance, trying to persuade Hezbollah to move out. And in the meantime, the IDF could prepare itself, then maybe to go for an operation against Hezbollah.

Larry Bernstein:

Eitan, where do you live?

Eitan Shamir:

I live between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Larry Bernstein:

And how many miles are you from the Gaza Strip?

Eitan Shamir:

50 miles.

Larry Bernstein:

You live an hour away from the war. There is talk that for Israel to feel secure it needs to have a 5 to 10 kilometer no-man zone to prevent another bulldozer and glider attacks. What do you think about that?

Eitan Shamir:

I don't live near Gaza, but outside the window, I see the light of a Palestinian village just across the fields. They're under Israeli security responsibility. They are Palestinians, not Israeli Arabs.

We live in a nice village like a classic American suburb with nice people. And I always tell my wife, if you don't look up, you can imagine that you are somewhere in Switzerland or California. But if you look up, you see the tower of the mosque and you are in the Middle East.

If you can carve out five kilometers, then you must put a better defense system. You are not allowed to put mines because it's against international conventions, but you can do better fencing.

Larry Bernstein:

How effective are land mines?

Eitan Shamir:

If there were mines that it would have been much harder for them to cross. The first thing is to make sure that there will be no threat. Now, it does not mean that there will be no Hamas, because there are Hamas in the West Bank, but if you leave them alone and they are in control of the whole area, the population, customs, the money, the salaries and then they build military capabilities. You make sure that this does not happen.

We had this experience also in 2002, people said, “It's impossible to stop the suicide bombers.” And Israel was able to do it, but it took some time, and it will take some time in Gaza now. You will have to have some security control for your forces to go in and to do what we call mowing the grass operation to make sure that every now and then you go in and you take out some of the terrorists, you blow up their facilities. You do not just leave them to develop like we did for 20 years in Gaza.

Larry Bernstein:

We heard that there was a complete breakdown in the internal defense of the Kibbutz and the villages near the Gaza border. These towns and Kibbutzim have men who are in the IDF reserve who are armed who were supposed to repel the surprise attack as first responders, what happened?

Eitan Shamir:

Members of the kibbutz, of the village in Israel used to have in the forties and fifties, they will have their guns at home. Today they had like five members of the security squad. The guns were in the locker, and they did not have the keys. Because nobody expected anything. Because it was the weekend and it was a holiday, some were abroad, some were with their families. So out of 10, they were three or four. Again, they did not have the weapons because the IDF told them that it's riskier to have the weapon at home because it can get stolen. To put them in some safe room somewhere in the middle of the kibbutz and someone will have the key. So, all this is going to change drastically.

Larry Bernstein:

Tell us about the women who serve in the IDF and the critical role that they play.

Eitan Shamir:

The Israeli army is the only army that from its get-go, conscripted women to mandatory service. In ‘48, they were fighting, but after ‘48 they sent them to do mostly office work. But since the 90s, roles started to open for women. You see women today in combat roles and different units. Some units are still closed for women. But they found out that women could do some jobs much better than men. They have better verbal abilities, more patience, and more mature, which is important.

Using them for instructional purposes, it is very good. And for intelligence or technological positions at least 50% today are women. This is what the IDF is trying to do because Israel is not a big country to utilize as it's the best it can.

Larry Bernstein:

When Prime Minister Ben Gurion created the IDF it was not only to make an army but to unify the nation.

Eitan Shamir:

Ben Gurion had this idea of the IDF is the melting pot and the creator of the Israeli society. And those who study the IDF in terms of the civil military aspects one of the findings was that there are more intermarriages between the different groups because of the service.

If you look at the surveys of trust towards Israeli institutions: the courts, the government, the parliament, the media, police, the IDF is by large margin consistently above everyone else.

The IDF is the one institution that everyone feels part of. Either you are serving it or your husband or your wife or your kids. And then when you are involved, you know it is not perfect, but you care about it.

Larry Bernstein:

How does the Palestinian who lives in Israel compare his life and prospects relative to his peers that live in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, or other Arab nations?

Eitan Shamir:

The military administration in the West Bank gave us a brief like 2014 when the height of the Arab Spring, horrible civil war in Syria. I was asking the Israeli officer there, whether the Palestinian young person, maybe 20, does he feel lucky because he is in the West Bank? And at the time the West Bank things were very stable. There was work, life was safe and quiet. And his reply was, “you are making the wrong analogy, because they're not comparing themselves to the Egyptian or the Syrian or the Libyan young person. They are comparing themselves to you or to your kids. They want to have whatever you have.”

Larry Bernstein:

How would you compare the violence in Gaza versus the civil war in Syria?

Eitan Shamir:

There is a huge difference, what happened in Syria, and it's remarkable how this has been forgotten so quickly. Syria the destruction and the death toll was on such more massive scale. You had like 7 million people who became refugees and left Syria, either to Turkey or to Jordan. The estimates are more than half a million people who lost their lives in the war.

Larry Bernstein:

What is the scale for civilian deaths in Gaza?

Eitan Shamir:

In Gaza it's very difficult to know the numbers. The public health ministry of Hamas, which is the public health Ministry of Gaza, is the one who is giving us the numbers. And they are giving is around 20,000 killed. And they estimate another 7,000 under the rubble. But what they never say is how many Hamas militants are from these numbers? The IDF estimates that it killed 7,000 Hamas terrorists. The IDF didn't provide numbers of uninvolved that were killed. This is the estimation that there is, at least for every Hamas military, there is a civilian that was killed. But this is relative to other militaries operating in such environment. It's a good ratio. And relative to these exceedingly difficult circumstances where the Hamas is so much embedded within the population.

Larry Bernstein:

Why is Hamas hiding and fighting in hospitals, schools, and residential communities? Why are they using human shields?

Eitan Shamir:

The Hamas’ captives spoke about it in their interrogation. It is the obvious reasons. If we are under a hospital, if we are in school, we know that the IDF will be reluctant to hit us, and if there were to hit us, the IDF will lose in the public opinion. This will limit the IDF’s ability to operate. So, either way, there will be consequences. And they said, if we need to sacrifice some of our population, so be it.

Now, Hamas is not ISIS in the sense that ISIS came from the outside and they took over a city which was not theirs, and there were outside fighters.

Hamas is also embedded in the population. He has his family. The problematic thing is that the population supports this idea that they are willing to sacrifice their own.

Larry Bernstein:

How would you compare the local population’s view of Hezbollah in Northern Lebanon where the fighters are not local?

Eitan Shamir

Hezbollah does not camouflage itself within the villages within the civilian population, but Hezbollah is a bit more sensitive to the fate of the population than Hamas.

Larry Bernstein:

There are a million people who evacuated Gaza City and moved to refugee camps where they live in dire circumstances. They have friends and relatives who have been killed. How does that population feel about Hamas instigating this conflict?

Eitan Shamir:

It's hard to say, but we can see also that there was a lot of support for this, and it was seen as a great victory. Hamas is a repressive regime. And if you show that you are defiant, and they will make sure that you either arrested or killed. At this point, we do not see signs of moving against Hamas.

Larry Bernstein:

I end each episode with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about with the IDF?

Eitan Shamir:

I was very worried for some years that the IDF is neglecting its core, which is the ground forces and the regular units. And it is becoming more addicted to the high technology and to the special operations and quick solutions and then neglected the reserves and the regular units. I hope the 7th served as a wakeup call shifting back toward rebuilding. Understanding that you need the large army, you need the masses, you need the reserve, you need everyone to participate, and you need to build it from the ground up. Going back to the basic skills, the basic professionalism, which is especially important. Not to rely too much on the technology.

The realism of war is, and as we see it also in Ukraine, that you need the large army and the reserve.

Larry Bernstein:

Thanks to Eitan for joining us today.

If you missed our previous podcast the topic was Saving Congress. Our speaker was Philip Wallach who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Philip is the author of the book entitled Why Congress which describes the role of the legislature in the American constitutional framework and why we need to encourage Congress to legislate instead of delegating its responsibility to the executive branch, the bureaucracy, and the courts.

Philip explained why McCarthy was sacked as the Speaker of the House, and why the House is abandoning centralized control in its leadership and instead moving towards decentralizing responsibilities to its committees, and why that may be a better way to pass bipartisan legislative compromises.

You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please subscribe to our weekly emails and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Thank you for joining us today, good-bye.

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