10/31/25 Bill Buppert on the Follies of American Militarism

·36 min·3 clips

Only 3.5% of the roughly 12 million enslaved Africans in the Atlantic slave trade landed in North America.

1. Former U.S. Army and Navy officer Bill Buppert joins Scott Horton to discuss American militarism and promote his new course at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. 2. Horton, launching the Academy alongside instructors James Bovard and Ramzi Baroud, says Buppert's course on U.S. military history since World War II taught him a great deal. 3. The episode's core thesis is that America has built the finest and most expensive military in history, one fit for 20th-century combat but obsolete for 21st-century warfare. 4. Buppert describes enlisting in the Navy at 17, later commissioning as an Army officer, and serving as both an infantryman and intelligence officer in airborne, air assault, and special forces units. 5. He retired in 2003, partly because he and other junior officers had already concluded the stated justifications for the Iraq War were false before the press caught on. 6. Buppert later did two contractor tours in Afghanistan, advising Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense general staff in 2013 and training Afghan National Army Special Operations Command commandos near the Uzbekistan border in 2015. 7. His master's thesis examined Michael Collins's 1916-1922 Irish independence campaign against Britain as an early case study in smaller powers defeating a dominant military through irregular warfare. 8. Buppert and Horton discuss William Wilberforce's 1801 speech against slavery in the British Parliament and note that only about 3.5% of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic slave trade landed in North America. 9. They criticize Barack Obama for launching the 2011 Libya war and continuing Bush-era conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq while opening new fronts in Somalia and Yemen. 10. Buppert connects Houthi forces in Yemen destroying roughly two dozen U.S. drones with Iranian-sourced technology to a broader 'revolution in military affairs' that lets smaller countries counter expensive Western platforms. 11. He and Horton argue the war in Ukraine has proven the front-line Abrams battle tank obsolete against Russian forces, with the Pentagon slow to absorb the lesson. 12. Buppert illustrates institutional inertia with the story of British engineers who invented the angled aircraft-carrier flight deck to reduce crash deaths, only for U.S. commanders to resist adopting it during the Korean War despite mounting pilot deaths. 13. The two recommend the British sitcom Yes Minister as an accurate depiction of how bureaucracy actually functions, tying it to economist James Buchanan's public choice theory. 14. Buppert notes Ukrainian soldiers have complained that NATO training in Germany still doesn't incorporate drone warfare, despite drones now dominating the battlefield. 15. Horton and Buppert trade further criticism of Saudi Arabia's role funding Sunni-linked conflicts and U.S. administrations' willingness to overlook it in exchange for arms deals. 16. Buppert references his master's-level academic background and ongoing citizen-journalism podcasts, War Notes and Chasing Ghosts, both hosted through the Libertarian Institute. 17. The conversation closes with Buppert previewing that he's already working on a new book, without giving details. 18. The tone is a warm, bantering conversation between two longtime acquaintances, mixing serious military-history critique with personal jokes about baldness and a shared interest in skateboarding. 19. Listeners interested in military history, U.S. foreign-policy critique, or how bureaucratic institutions resist change would enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners looking for current-events news coverage rather than a wide-ranging historical conversation might find the pace meandering.

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