A Blunt and Honest Appraisal.
An interview with Lt. Gen. (Retired) Ben Hodges.
The quick brief on this episode’s guest is this:
Lt. General “Ben” Hodges III is a retired United States Army officer who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe. He now works as a consultant to multinational corporations and as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics. He previously held the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Gen. Hodges is also the co-author (with retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Allen and Julian Lindley-French) of ‘Future War and the Defence of Europe.’ As one reviewer put it: “The book doesn’t hold much back in its critique of both Europe and America. It offers a blunt and honest appraisal of the current security structures and how they may develop towards 2030.”
Given the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and Russia’s campaign to destabilize NATO, I emailed Gen. Hodges and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed for The News Items Podcast. Happily for us, he said “yes.”
General Hodges is a great interview. He’s smart, knowledgeable, candid, shrewd, funny. We covered a lot of ground.
(News Items Podcast with Gen. Ben Hodges (Retired). Recorded 16 March 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger.)
You can find this podcast, and previous News Items podcasts, on most of the major platforms, including Apple, Amazon and Spotify.