Steven Bartlett interviews Professor Robert Pape on Iran war escalation, US midterms, and the risk of global conflict
Steven Bartlett speaks with Professor Robert Pape, political scientist at the University of Chicago, about what he describes as the eight most dangerous weeks in recent history — a convergence of the US midterm elections, escalating conflict with Iran, and Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Summary
Steven Bartlett interviews Professor Robert Pape, who has studied political violence for 30 years and has advised every White House since 9/11. Pape argues that the convergence of three simultaneous crises — the US midterm election transfer of power, a planned US-Israeli military escalation against Iran, and Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure — creates an unprecedented danger window. He presents a detailed escalation pathway showing how a planned three-day bombing campaign against Iran could spiral into a prolonged conflict, inspired terrorist attacks, cyber warfare against Western infrastructure, and ultimately conditions resembling World War III if European nations retaliate directly against Moscow. Pape proposes specific "firebreak" measures that Congress, governors, and international mediators could implement to prevent the worst outcomes, and reveals that people in positions of power have contacted him following his previous appearances on the show.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Eight Most Dangerous Weeks
Steven Bartlett: Robert Pape, every time I speak to you, I feel like I start with the same question, but it is the question that is front of mind for me — which is, what the hell is going on in the world at the moment?
Robert Pape: What's going on is we are getting deeper and deeper into an escalation trap, and we are moving up rungs in escalation where risk is growing. We are about to enter the eight most dangerous weeks since this war began, and they may become the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives. We are going to see the coming together of three fundamentally dangerous issues. We're about to see the US midterms, where the voting has now stopped. But we are now in the process of counting the vote, certifying the vote, and in two months — and it will take two months — seeding the victors. That's the transfer of power. The real danger zone of political violence — what I call violent populism — is starting now. It began the moment the voting stopped and the counting began, because that's the transfer of power.
Bartlett: Most of my audience around the world probably won't know, including myself, what a midterm is.
Pape: In the presidential system, in the United States, we have four-year terms for our US presidents. For our Congress, we hold an election every two years. We have two houses in our Congress. Sometimes it dovetails with the election of the president, in which case we just call it the general election. But when the president is not up for re-election, we call it a midterm — meaning midterm of the president's term.
Bartlett: So let me explain this to you, and you tell me if I've got this. There is the House of Representatives, and then there's the Senate. And both of them work to vote laws into power. And as we stand here right now, the Republicans — Trump's party — have a majority in both. So it's quite easy for them to pass new laws. What you're saying is that in these midterms, there's a prospect that Trump might lose his majority in the Senate and in the House, which would mean he wouldn't be able to get his laws passed very easily.
Pape: It's not just about passing laws, Steven. It's about a system of checks and balances. The way the constitution was set up is that the Congress, the president, and also the Supreme Court — which is not an elected body — check each other. What's supposed to moderate the policies in the United States so we don't go to the extremes is when different parties control the Congress and the presidency. When you have the same party controlling both houses of Congress and the president, by definition, there's very little check and balance on the president. The president can pretty much do what the president wants, especially in international affairs, but also very heavily in domestic affairs. That's why the president's power is going to be severely checked if Republicans no longer control the House and the Senate.
Bartlett: So why is this the eight most dangerous weeks in your history?
Pape: It's the eight most dangerous weeks because political violence — especially in the era of violent populism, when tens of millions of Americans support political violence on both sides of the aisle — the most dangerous time is the transition of power. We saw this six years ago with January 6th. It's important to remember that in November 2020, President Biden was elected. However, that did not prevent President Trump from taking steps to prevent that transfer of power. We saw it come to a head on January 6th, and that occurred over a two-month process. It was when the voting stopped and the counting began, and then the certification of the votes began, and then the transfer of power. That was the most dangerous moment we have seen in American domestic politics since the Civil War. We are heading to a very similar situation again, and it's worse now.
Bartlett: How do you know?
Pape: For 30 years I've studied political violence around the world. But for the last five years, Steven, I have devoted myself to understanding what's happened in the United States. We are seeing a transition of power in the context of literally this fact.
Bartlett: What does that fact say?
Pape: That fact is that today, as of a month ago, over 40 million Americans support the use of the US military to suppress Democratic protesters against the Trump agenda. Think of this as 40 million Americans who support political violence for Trump, and over 60 million Americans who support the use of force to prevent Trump from being president. I've been doing these national representative surveys for five years. These numbers are double what they were in September 2024, two years ago. And two years ago, you'll recall, we had multiple assassination attempts against President Trump. So these numbers are worse than that. And we are coming into the most volatile election in our lifetimes, because this really will determine the fate of President Trump's administration for the final two years.
If it turns out that at the end of these two months the Democrats control one — or especially if they control both — the House and the Senate, this is going to mean the virtual political destruction of the Trump presidency. The Democrats in control of both houses of Congress will not only have the power of subpoenas to compel, on penalty of going to jail and prison, testimony from members of the Trump administration. They will have the power of impeachment. And it's not just impeaching President Trump — it's impeaching the members of his cabinet. Think Secretary Hegseth, think the Attorney General, think the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. And if they also control the Senate, with just a few more Republican votes — and there are many disgruntled Republicans already, many Republicans who have moved away from President Trump in recent months — they have the possibility of literally removing them from office.
That would create a spiral down. There's no political bottom there, Steven. This is not like, oh, it's just once you get rid of one cabinet secretary, everybody calms down. What we are witnessing is a true watershed period for the political power of President Trump. And that means also the power of the MAGA agenda — whether or not there will be mass deportations in the country.
Bartlett: How would that be impacted by the midterms?
Pape: If starting in January there are months and months of turmoil in the Trump administration, where literally the heads of the cabinet offices including the Department of Homeland Security are on the block to be removed, the idea that you're going to have consistent operations within the departments becomes very, very, very difficult.
The Escalation Trap — Iran, Russia, and the Midterms Converging
Bartlett: What do you think is going to happen then over these eight weeks?
Pape: It starts with the midterms. It starts with the issue of violent populism. It starts with the issue of the consequences of President Trump's presidency. But it doesn't stop there, because this is not happening in isolation. It's happening during the Iran war. And so what happens in this midterm transition period could also easily dovetail with more escalation in the Iran war. In fact, President Trump has promised over and over and over again that he will escalate after the elections. Well, now we're after the elections. And at the same time, as if that was not dangerous enough, we have a third issue, which is that President Putin and Russia are threatening to escalate strongly against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine — to target electric power in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, and in Odessa in a dramatic way.
Bartlett: I thought they were doing a deal.
Pape: President Putin has done nothing to say that this is off the table, and there are every sign — and in fact growing signs from European governments — that they are extremely worried about what's coming in the Ukraine war, that there will be, as the phrasing is now called, a dark winter in Ukraine.
Bartlett: So these are eight weeks. Talk me through them week by week. Let's start with the beginning, which is the election results.
Pape: The question is, will President Trump accept the election results? Or if they ultimately go against the Democrats, will the Democrats — who have built up this giant set of hopes and expectations of victory — accept not taking control of Congress? This is really step one. And this is coming right on the heels of another step. President Trump has promised that the United States and Israel will conduct strikes against Iran — heavy strikes — right after the midterms.
Bartlett: When did he say that? I was looking for his quotes on this and he seems to be pretty cryptic.
Pape: Trump described it as "decision time," stating he faces a choice between reaching a deal or taking action to finish them off. And asked directly by reporters whether strikes would resume, he remarked that anything is possible and declined to take options off the table. As he is putting on the table the distinct possibility of deciding to do these strikes, he's taking serious steps with his administration to literally prepare for them. Step number one — and that's a costly step — is to remove embassy personnel, the families of embassy staff, from the region. This has happened in Saudi Arabia. This has happened in multiple frontline Gulf states. The second big thing that's happened is he has asked the military for a detailed set of attack plans. These detailed plans — we have the leaks of them. He has not just had the plans drawn up, but he's given the orders for CENTCOM that within a maximum of 96 hours of his go code, they are to execute the plan.
The Roulette Analogy — Why Trump Cannot Simply Walk Away
Bartlett: So I've got your book here, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, and you actually spent a long time modelling what would happen if the US decided to bomb Iran before they did. And what you said to me in these previous conversations has played out in a really accurate way. When we first met and you first told me about this idea of an escalation trap, I didn't really understand it — the US military is so big, of course they would just go in there and win. But you were right. So I ask you now, five or six months into the war — how does this end?
Pape: An escalation trap, Steven, is when a strong country like the United States and Israel attacks a weaker country and they have tactical success — the bombs hit targets, the bombs kill leaders — but the weaker country gains power. In this case, that happened almost immediately, as Iran gained heavy control of the Strait of Hormuz and with it heavy control of 20% of the world's oil.
Bartlett: What happens next?
Pape: What happens next is humiliation for the side that started that attack. This might be a good time, Steven, to let me explain what a lot of people think is strategy. A lot of people think that strategy is a chess game. But let's play that out and show you what the escalation trap looks like. So, this is white — and white plays an opening move.
Bartlett: Is that America in this analogy?
Pape: This is America. This is President Trump. White plays an opening move and red then makes a move. White takes a pawn. Now it looks like white is ahead. Red makes another move — let's say red brings out a knight, threatening the pawn. White makes another move, putting the bishop there, threatening the queen. But the red queen can now simply take the bishop. There was an initial gain, but what happened very quickly is red is now more powerful than it was before. At this point in a chess game, Steven, what happens is white offers red a draw. Trump and Israel started this. Iran got ahead. And so everybody's been saying for months and months, President Trump, just take a deal.
Well, that would make perfect sense if what we were doing is playing a chess game. International politics, especially when a strong power is behind, is not a chess game. A better analogy is roulette. You can go to the casino and see that the odds of winning on a number aren't very good. But if you just decide to bet on red, it's not quite 50/50 — the house still has an advantage — but a lot of roulette players think, "I'll start there." What happens when they lose? Now you're the house. You've just won. And what happens is a lot of gamblers will suddenly dig in deeper. "I'm going to double down. I'm going to bet even more on red because since I lost on red before, surely it'll come up red again." But the wheel spins and it comes up black again. Now the house has taken even more chips.
And a lot of gamblers also make a deal with a bookie — "Let me borrow some chips because I'm going to get it back." And what are they going to do? They're going to bet an even bigger pile of chips on red 36, because now the odds are riskier. But if they win, they're going to make back the money they lost and even more. At each rung, President Trump has made a bet. He bet that if he attacks the Supreme Leader, kills the Supreme Leader, this will weaken Iran. It didn't work. He lost the chips. So he bet on a six-week air campaign. He thought, "I'm going to go not just for two or three days of bombing, I'm going to go for six weeks of bombing." He lost on red again.
Bartlett: How did he lose that?
Pape: Because Iran did not concede and kept control of the Strait of Hormuz. That is what is wrecking things and putting gas prices up high. So as time has gone on, the chips that he is risking are American gas prices, American lives, American interest rates — all of that is the equivalent of the chips that we are losing. But now he's bet again on the blockade. And it's been six solid months, Steven, and he's lost again. Because after six months, Iran has not caved. It has not collapsed. Those gas prices are going up. This is why he's under so much pressure in the midterms.
But it gets worse than that. He's lost again. Now he's way behind. And he's got a deadline — because in the gambler's deadline, all these chips I've just been playing with, I've borrowed them from the bookies.
Bartlett: Are you saying that he's borrowed the chips from somewhere?
Pape: He's borrowing the chips — and in this case the chips are the political support of his party, MAGA, and the control of the party — in order to win back everything. Because come January 3rd, there's going to be a new Congress. That's the equivalent of the bookies wanting all those chips back in your hand.
Bartlett: So you're saying that with this last bet he's making, because he started the war in Iran, sentiment towards the Republicans and Trump has gone down.
Pape: Hugely down. Lost all those chips in your hand.
Bartlett: And now senators and Congress people are going to potentially lose their jobs on the Republican side to Democrats.
Pape: That's right. They're going to lose their jobs. And as they lose their jobs, they're not going to want to support him in the future. They will pull away from him more and more and more.
Bartlett: Why doesn't he just — he's got two years then. Is it not conceivable that he just decides to relax for two years? "I can't get laws passed and I can't get things done, but I'll just chill at the White House."
Pape: There are two big problems with that idea, Steven. Problem number one is presidents don't just abandon their party, their agenda, and their legacy. We see this not just with President Trump and MAGA, but we saw this with Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson went through a very similar game of roulette where he kept doubling down as each rung of the escalation ladder cost him more and more support. As the American people were turning against the war, he kept going up the ladder.
Bartlett: Chasing his losses.
Pape: He's chasing his losses, hoping that even though each risk is riskier, each bet is riskier, he sees it as the only way to dig out of this doom loop. And there are deadlines. The equivalent of the bookie wanting their money back in two weeks is the election. And it's not just the day of the election — the elections mean a transfer of power where the whole legacy comes unglued. And the legacy of the losing president is the worst of all. This would mean President Trump becomes Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson combined — the worst president we've ever had in anything like any of our lifetimes. This is a huge problem for any president to simply absorb.
The second point is crypto. President Trump has made enormous money for himself and his family on various investments, and a lot of it is in crypto. Crypto is the ultimate confidence investment. What you have with crypto is this can go up — poof — when President Trump's power goes up. So the problem with crypto and his money in crypto is that it is heavily dependent on President Trump's power. And when President Trump's power goes poof, a lot of crypto — not all of it, but a lot of it — will go poof. And that will be true not just for him personally — he's 80 years old — but for his family, for his friends, those people who have made enormous fortunes on this. So when President Trump looks at this, this isn't just ego humiliation. This is massive loss in history, and this is also massive personal financial loss for his family.
Bartlett: His family are quite involved in the gambling laws and prediction markets in the United States as well. I think his son is actually on the board of two of the big prediction market companies, and they've sort of held back the laws and regulations so that prediction markets can exist. So I understand it from that perspective as well — they do have financial interests that could be at risk.
Pape: And what happens with the gambler here? They keep going until they lose it all.
Bartlett: So what happens?
Pape: They lose it all — in Iran.
The Three-Day Bombing Plan and the Instant Thunder Parallel
Pape: So let's go back to the board now that we understand the escalation trap that President Trump is in. What we can see is there's reality to why he wants to escalate and double down again, because he is looking for a way to turn around this pessimistic view of President Trump as someone who can't win the war. This is now critical, because if he doesn't find a way to hold on to the final set of chips of MAGA support — which depends on him being the winner — he's going to lose those chips going forward. So this is the big pressure, the pressure of humiliation for the loser to keep doubling down. And this is why this step is a serious risk as we go forward. He hasn't given the go code yet to actually strike Iran. And we're going to play out the rest of this, because once we see where this could all head, it's important to understand that I've advised every White House since 9/11, and I've seen that in the White Houses, even though there are heavy commitments to policies, until the final go order is given, it is possible to reverse course.
Bartlett: I'm pretty sure he's learned by now that just dropping more bombs doesn't work.
Pape: This is the mistake that many folks are making in the media, because they have gone from being white belts to green belts with their strategy, but they haven't gone to brown belt and black belt. The leaks that are coming out about the three-day plan are consistent. The plan that's on his desk is a plan to hit targets in Iran over a three-day period. And as soon as the media saw the word "three" in the three-day plan, they concluded this can't be anything significant. But what we're talking about in the target sets that are coming out is a whole new level of leadership targeting, a level of economic targeting — hitting refineries, economic power, and bridges. This looks to me an awful lot like what was called Instant Thunder — the three-day plan that was supposed to open the war against Iraq in 1991, targeting 84 leadership and infrastructure targets, meant to paralyze Saddam Hussein's regime. This is exactly the air campaign that has been at the heart of air strategists since the 1991 war. When I am debating air strategy, I am literally debating the people who came up with that plan originally and are still pushing it.
The three-day plan is a Pentagon military contingency for a rapid, high-intensity aerial campaign against Iran if post-election negotiations break down — presumably after the midterm elections. It is designed to hit missile sites, drone launch hubs, IRGC command centres, and energy infrastructure over 72 hours to force capitulation without triggering a prolonged ground war. Trump paused major strikes until after the November 3rd midterms, but he has explicitly characterised the post-election window as a final choice to either strike a diplomatic deal or initiate these strikes to finish it off.
Bartlett: That's right. This is much more than the word "three days" would communicate. What you just read there is exactly the full set of Instant Thunder target sets. If he does this three-day plan, does it fail?
Pape: It fails. And then what happens is we go to stage three, which is a three-day bombing campaign becomes a much longer bombing campaign. The three-day bombing campaign drags on, Steven. This is exactly what happened with Instant Thunder. It was planned as three days with an extra three days of backup strikes, but it went on for 43 days and never did succeed in paralyzing the military of Iraq.
Bartlett: And the hope here — the success, as far as Trump would see it — would be that they come to the table to make a deal, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to vouch never to have nuclear weapons.
Pape: No, not only that. That's part of the deal, but once you do this, there's nobody to come to the table. You are destroying so much of the leadership stratum that the idea of coming to the table — President Trump has occasionally said he's not sure who to negotiate with. Now, once you're in day six or seven of this, you're really not going to know who to negotiate with. Because the whole point of this plan, Steven, is to paralyze the government so it cannot function. The goal of the plan is not to tilt the balance of hawks and doves inside the government. This is a plan that is meant to completely paralyze the body of the military. And then the problem is, because you've paralyzed it, who are you going to negotiate with?
Once you do this, if you haven't fully paralyzed the military — and that's what I'm telling you is very likely — what's going to happen is the Iranian military that is left, and there's going to be quite a bit of it left with a lot of power to strike back, they're going to start lashing back. They can lash back in a whole variety of ways, including attacks against airports in the region. This is when Saddam Hussein, after we did this to him, bombed sites in Riyadh. This is when his personnel were killed in Riyadh. And in fact we could never stop the Scud missiles of Iraq.
We've seen the breaking of this threshold already. It's credible because we've seen the beginning of this with Iran's ally, the Houthis — the group in Yemen. As the escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis was escalating, the Houthis directly struck with missiles Terminals 3 and Terminal 4 on separate days at Riyadh International Airport, killing over a dozen people and wounding over 300 people. This was the first time in this war we saw the direct, intentional targeting of civilians. And it wasn't just one day — it was multiple days. What I'm pointing out is this is the pattern that you would expect as this progresses. You're getting deeper in. And who are you going to communicate with to tell them to stop?
Bartlett: What's number six?
Pape: Number six. Now we need to understand that what's happened, Steven, is look how deep we've gone in. We started with what was supposed to be just another limited strike. This time, however, it's building its own momentum. And as it builds its own momentum, we now have that decentralised structure in Iran striking back in ways it decides on its own. But there's another problem. These attacks, Steven, are likely going to kill thousands and thousands of civilians in Iran.
Bartlett: Which attacks?
Pape: The three-day and the six-day and the continued attacks in this Instant Thunder-style air campaign — exactly the air campaign we executed against Saddam Hussein in '91. But it was against his regime, against the economic infrastructure. We hit his oil refineries. We hit his electric power. And we killed somewhere between five and 15,000 civilians in doing this. This is not a plan where no civilians die.
Bartlett: So you're saying lots of people are going to die through this period.
Pape: Lots of people are going to die here, which leads to inspired attacks.
Inspired Attacks — The Tel Aviv Plane Incident
Pape: What an inspired attack is, is a terrorist attack that is not command-directed by a government. It is not coming from the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader may even be dead as a result of all this. An inspired attack is what we saw in the Tel Aviv plane incident. The last time I was on your show, I was warning that we would likely see civilian attacks — it could well be inspired attacks. Because in the aftermath of the tens of millions — the 10 million-plus — who came out to support the Supreme Leader and called for revenge, that is exactly the pool of sentiments likely to inspire individuals on their own — not command-directed by Iran — to carry out terrorist attacks or suicide terrorist attacks.
What happened in the Tel Aviv incident? A co-pilot — the plane took off from the airport in Dubai with about 170 civilians on board, around a hundred of whom were Israelis. After two and a half hours, that co-pilot took a hatchet that was in the cockpit — most people didn't even know there was a hatchet in the cockpit — and he tried to take control of the plane, tried to kill the pilot. He was only 30 minutes from Tel Aviv.
Bartlett: I've read your book about it — two, actually. Cutting the Fuse as well.
Pape: Studying all those attacks — once I saw exactly the location of where the co-pilot tried to take control of the plane, that told me very heavily this was likely a suicide attack. Because if he just wanted to kill himself, he likely would have done that almost immediately after the plane had taken off. He wouldn't wait until he was so close to Tel Aviv that he could have the possibility of driving it into a target there, killing people on the plane and people on the ground. Looking at some of the reports from CBS News, various Israeli officials have linked it to Iran, and Trump also said, based on what he was hearing, that the co-pilot had direct links to Iran, warning that any state actor behind the incident would face devastation.
Bartlett: Well, we don't know for sure it wasn't command-directed.
Pape: Steven, I'm telling you that it wouldn't need to be command-directed. Some of the best information we have comes from the pilot himself. Now that he's healing, he's giving interviews describing a situation where everything was fine in the flight — no sign whatsoever that he was sitting with a mentally disturbed individual. And then suddenly he feels a blow on his head. Then he starts to put two and two together, and that's when he makes every effort to keep the door open. We can't say it's 100% certain it was a suicide terrorist attack, but my estimate is that it's gone from being say 75% certain to 90% certain — that this was an individual who wanted not just to kill himself but to kill everybody on that plane, and to take control of the plane just in time to ram it into Tel Aviv.
Bartlett: The pilot said the morning started very normally. The first officer asked to pray, then struck him from behind with the crash axe.
Pape: And notice the prayer. This is a very common pattern with religious suicide attackers. They commonly go through a certain ritual before they carry out their attack.
Bartlett: The pilot thought a heavy piece of equipment had fallen on his head before realising he was under assault. As his vision tunnelled from blood loss, his sole focus was releasing his seat belt and crawling towards the cockpit door release. He explained that each burst of physical effort caused him to fade in and out of consciousness. He noted the terrifying sensation of feeling the aircraft plunge violently nose-down while he was on the floor. Believing he would not survive, he pushed through to unlock the reinforced door before collapsing face down, which allowed other passengers to see him and rush in. And then from what I heard in the reports, passengers rushed through the door and restrained the co-pilot. I don't know who landed the plane — was the pilot able to?
Pape: No, there was actually somebody on board who was a pilot, had the knowledge to land the plane. This was an unintentional backup pilot who just happened to be there, and that was extremely fortuitous. But what you see here, Steven, are the telltale signs. Because if it was a suicide attacker, the first thing that would come to their mind is that if they took control of the plane two and a half hours from Tel Aviv — remember, it's a three-hour flight from Dubai — if they took control too far out, that would create the opportunity for Israel to scramble jets to prevent it from striking Tel Aviv.
Bartlett: So you think they were trying to crash the plane into Israel?
Pape: Yes, I think it's very strong. And this is what I mean by inspired attacks. When I saw the first command-directed attack — that's the Houthis on civilians — and now we've seen an actual inspired terrorist attack that has already happened, let's keep going.
Violent Populism — The Wildfire Analogy
Pape: So why did I jump up to the other line on the board? Because we need to see the interactions. This is a crisis that's unfolding. What you are seeing is that the election results are creating incentives to go down this road. But this doesn't just stay on its own path. It starts to play a role and come back up and start to affect events here. Because as this is occurring, we need to expect gas prices are going up. We need to expect diesel prices are going up. We need to expect the housing market, which is already frozen up, is going to freeze up even more. And the effects are not simply what's happening in Iran or even what's happening in the economy — it's going to be what people think. We just got a big lesson in what people think in France. What happened in France wasn't just a one-day problem and it wasn't just a one-off — it started to spread to other parts of Europe. The riots — and a big part of the riots, not the only reason, but a big part — are the rising prices due to the Iran war. This is exactly recreating and making those dynamics worse.
So now we're back to the possibility of protesters and federal agents starting to clash. This is a moment when they're still counting ballots. We have moved through November and we have nowhere near come to the end of the transfer of power to the new Congress. We have this whole very contentious election, the counting and the certification of the ballots, occurring not in isolation but in addition to an international set of events.
Bartlett: And also Russia.
Pape: And also Russia. So we've skipped over Putin. What's happened here also, in roughly week four — around Thanksgiving possibly, I can't polymarket it to the day, Steven, but we're just giving the sequence — as the Iran war is escalating, we have the issue of whether there will be an actual deal with Trump and Putin that prevents Putin from escalating on Ukraine. Putin isn't just interested in some sort of photo op with President Trump. What he wants out of President Trump is real pressure on Ukraine to cave to Putin's demands.
Bartlett: What do you think Putin wants from Ukraine? What do you think he wants generally?
Pape: Let's look at some of the maps. A really good way to understand this is in this map from August 2022, four months after the invasion of Ukraine. You can see that the lines have settled down into eastern Ukraine. There are no longer Russian forces around Kyiv — all on the edges of the south and east of Ukraine. This is Donetsk. These are some of the areas that Putin has already annexed. He's officially annexed them. And this is Crimea. Putin is still wanting to gain at least the rest of the territory right around here — these are the pieces of these four oblasts that he has not conquered yet. He has officially annexed them into Russia, passed laws in Russia, but he has not physically taken control of them. So at a minimum, he's interested in controlling this bit of white territory here and here. And notice at this point he's pretty far away from that.
Now he may also want — and he's talked about an area called Novorossiya — the next set of oblasts just behind the first four, where vast numbers of Russian speakers also live in Ukraine. So the debate is whether Putin only wants this white territory or does he also want this. But let's look at where he is four years later, after four solid years and the loss of at a minimum 250,000 dead Russians. This is the minimum, Steven — there are counts that go far higher, but these are the counts based on obituaries, so we're really sure by name that at least that number of Russians have died. Look at how far he still is from that white area. He's gained a little bit of territory — about 1% of Ukraine's territory — but look how far away he still is. This is July 2026, and he is nowhere near the second force.
So when we say that Putin wants a deal, this is not Putin settling for some sort of a signed piece of paper where he's just going to have a photo op with Trump. What he wants Trump to do is deliver the territory that he wants in Ukraine.
Bartlett: What do you think is going to happen?
Pape: I don't think Putin is going to get it. Trump is not going to be able to deliver. Trump can say that he'll deliver it, but he can't do that on his own. Only Ukraine could deliver that territory. For Zelensky to truly surrender that territory, there's a good chance he'll be killed by his own people, his own military.
Bartlett: They would kill him if he gave it up?
Pape: Oh my gosh, yes. What people don't know about international politics — even smart people who know a lot of history — is that leaders take dramatic risks when they're losers. I just explained to you the risk that Trump is taking. For someone in Putin's position or Zelensky's position, where they're literally talking about whether or not they will gain or surrender pieces of territory, for Zelensky to actually surrender not just the territory Putin currently has but even more — this is taking his life in his hands and his family's life in his hands.
Putin's Winter Escalation and the Path to World War III
Bartlett: What's number seven?
Pape: Ah, so let's keep looking. This is when Putin, because he doesn't get the territory, escalates. This is the most likely time — after Putin is sure that Trump can't deliver any more Ukrainian territory. So he moves to his next plan, which is the winter attack on the electric power stations in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa — the capital city of Ukraine and two of the major cities near the areas he wants to control. By attacking those electric power areas, he's not looking to just cause a couple of days of brownout where you don't have your heating for a couple of days. The plan is to knock out 90% of the power in those cities, and that would keep it out. If you truly knock that out by that amount, this is probably going to last a month or two.
Bartlett: This is very much his own escalation trap.
Pape: Very much. Putin is in an escalation trap because Putin started this by launching almost 200,000 Russian troops in order to not just take the southern and eastern part of Ukraine — remember, they were surrounding Kyiv. The idea was to take almost half of the country, and he lost. So he is in his own escalation trap. Because if he accepts surrender, if he accepts capitulation, now he has his own military to deal with. And he faces not just humiliation and a horrible legacy in history, but he really faces the fate that a lot of authoritarian leaders face when they lose major wars — which is being killed.
Bartlett: What do you think is going to happen with both of these wars?
Pape: I think they're going to happen at the same time. What this chart is really showing is that all three of these dynamics are occurring over literally the same eight weeks.
Bartlett: And what happens next?
Pape: What happens next is they start to interact with each other. So now as we start to see the escalation of violent populism starting in a small way for real — and when you say violent populism, what does that mean?
Violent populism is when political violence moves from the fringe to the mainstream, where you have not just small numbers of violent actors but large numbers of violent actors. You don't just have an isolated political assassination attempt — you have strings of them over a period of years. And you don't just have a protest that's a localised protest over, say, a police beating. Rodney King would be the classic example — a localised protest where in LA there were four days of riots, but only in LA. That was in the early 1990s. With violent populism, this starts to spread and become much, much more significant.
Bartlett: Was that kind of like the Black Lives Matter protests which spread across the world?
Pape: Exactly. It was a single focal point event — and I'm going to show you how these actually occur in just a moment — that can spread like wildfire. Because with violent populism, political violence takes on a whole new dimension. I like to use the analogy of a wildfire. A big part of the reason for that is because a lot of people know about wildfires and know that we have this combustible material — it's often dry wood that's been sitting there, and with global warming we've gotten more of it, and this is predictable. We can actually predict the size of the combustible material in a wildfire season. But what we can't do is predict the spark. What is the spark that's going to set this off? These are always unpredictable. The sparks can be a cigarette butt that's thrown in.
In this analogy, the combustible material with violent populism are the millions of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum who support political violence for their goals. Today we have over 40 million Americans who support political violence for Trump's goals. We have over 60 million Americans who support political violence against Trump's goals. They are the combustible material that can be set off.
Bartlett: So you're saying with that pretext, with the anger and with people being more supportive of violence to achieve their political goals, all it's going to take is a spark.
Pape: All it's going to take is a spark. And let's use January 6th as an example. What happened on January 6th is President Trump used his rhetoric — a tweet on December 19th, 2020 — to call MAGA to Washington to listen to him at the Ellipse. Then when they were there at the Ellipse, he told them to march on the Capitol, still kind of channelling where all the dry combustible material was. Then there was the true spark — and what was that true spark that set off January 6th? It was another tweet by Trump where he told them Mike Pence had let them down. At that moment, that's when the crowd burst through into the Capitol in multiple places in response to that tweet. And that's when you can hear the chants, "Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence." That's violent populism in action.
And notice what we need — just like what you do with wildfires — is a fire break. We don't want to wait until the next fire, because if we wait until the next wildfire occurs, it may happen and spread so quickly, Steven, that we may be in a situation like France. In France, this wasn't just a localised event where a protest got out of hand against one government building. This was a series of protests that got out of hand — not just in Paris, but in multiple cities in France. And then a week later, they happened again, and it wasn't just limited to France — it spread beyond itself. So this is what I mean by violent populism starting to emerge. These clashes between federal agents and protesters over, say, ballot counting — this is what I mean by a focal point event. It's literally an event that can act as a spark and touch off those sentiments. That is violent populism in action.
So now we have actual major problems starting to happen inside the United States. We have major problems in Iran that are just getting worse, and these are feeding each other. We have major problems in the Russia-Ukraine war, and this too is going to increase energy prices. These are not disconnected events anymore.
Bartlett: Is that why — I think it was Wes Streeting — said we in the UK need to stock up on this stuff?
Pape: That is exactly why I think they are stocking up. They're asking the public to stock up on batteries so that in case the internet goes down. Why would you stock up on batteries? Because there are more problems down the road here.
Bartlett: The UK government has asked people in the UK to stock up on batteries?
Pape: On batteries, beans, flashlights, water. Because what can happen as this escalation gets worse and worse is you can start to see that Ukraine will start to push back against Russia, and then Russia may start to punish the supporters of Ukraine in Europe — including right here in London, right here in Britain. And that's why the defence minister is calling for preparations. Not saying there's tactical intelligence that a threat is coming tomorrow, but looking at something like this board that we're outlining, Steven, and saying, "Wait a second — the risk of this starting to get out of control is starting to become real." And rather than wait for a panic to ensue after a cyber attack that knocks out the internet for several days or knocks out electric power in Britain for several days, go ahead and stock up on some stuff now so you can ride out some of those issues.
The UK government has officially told households to prepare for national emergencies, launching the "Be Ready" campaign, which advises every family to stockpile at least three days' worth of essential supplies to survive potential hostile state attacks, cyber warfare, or major infrastructure collapse. Britons are being asked to store three litres of bottled water per person per day, a three-day cache of non-perishable tinned food, alongside battery-powered wind-up torches, radios, power banks, first aid kits, and physical cash. The reason for physical cash, Steven, is because ATMs won't work.
Bartlett: Pointing directly to the reality of modern conflict and state-sponsored sabotage. The stark question being put to the public is how ordinary people would cope in a moment where electronic payment systems or local supermarket supply chains suddenly collapsed — a warning that has already driven panic buying, stripping supermarket shelves of bottled water and canned goods while sparking a massive run on emergency supplies across the entire country. That is crazy.
Pape: It is. And it's showing, Steven, that governments are already paying attention to the risks that we're laying out here. When we see the United States pulling back its personnel and families from embassies around the Middle East, when we see the British government initiating a "Be Ready" three-day preparation campaign, what you are seeing is governments understanding the risks that are starting to emerge.
The Minnesota Cyber Attack and Media Suppression
Bartlett: What's next?
Pape: US water systems forced to manual. This is where the real danger starts to come in. Once we see cyber attacks, we need to understand that this summer in Minnesota and in a number of other states in the United States in July, the power and the water went out. We had a water problem. The New York Times was the only paper to cover this, and the New York Times quoted directly from US intelligence, which said this was most likely Iran doing a cyber attack inside the United States. The story was never followed up again. It was not repeated by other agencies. That has all the hallmarks of US intelligence telling the papers not to cover the story.
Bartlett: You think that's what happened?
Pape: I've spent a lot of time with the US intelligence community. In the '90s I had a clearance, but in the last 20 or 30 years I've spent an enormous amount of time with our intelligence community. The quotes, the language in that article — if people go back to the article, you'll see that it's quoting specific people and saying that it has "Iran's fingerprints" for a cyber attack. That phrasing is very important, Steven, because that's exactly the unclassified phrasing that is used to understand the cyber capabilities of different actors — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
Bartlett: Do you think the water went out in Minnesota because Iran attacked?
Pape: I think it's most likely Iran. Yes, I do think that. We can't say for certain, but I would not put it forward if I didn't think it was a credible report.
Bartlett: And then you think the US government might have had a word with some journalists and said, "Listen, take it off the table. Don't talk about it."
Pape: They do. They do. In the Gulf War in 1991, there was a big effort by the Pentagon to work with CNN, ABC, and others in the news to control some of the news that was coming out. And in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war, this continued. One of the times I was on the set — I won't embarrass the journalist — I was on the set at CNN. They flew me into New York and I was sitting around the table, and the reporter, who is a famous reporter, had me on with certain generals. Before the cameras rolled, she said, "So let's start with the ground rules. What should we not say? What should we not ask you? What should we not talk about with the public?" Just imagine that, Steven. They would ask you to tell them what they can't share with the public.
They were asking people from the Bush administration — where the normal role of the journalist is to do the opposite. In fact, CNN very famously got a lot of prominence by interviewing Saddam Hussein when the US military went apoplectic when they did. So this is what I mean by when you ask me, would it be possible for US intelligence or the US government to ask media — for the good of national security, they would say — to cool it on a story? The fact is I've seen it myself.
Troops in the Streets and Emergency Powers
Bartlett: Wow. What's next?
Pape: So now this is the big problem we worry about. I can't tell you this is certain to come — I would not want to do that. I'm telling you this is the pathway. And if we get all the way down to this part of the pathway — and that's an if — then we have to worry about real troops in the streets in the weeks just before the Congress would be seated.
Bartlett: American troops in American streets?
Pape: American troops in American streets.
Bartlett: Has that happened before?
Pape: Since the '50s and the '60s, when the environment was completely different. President Trump — just to put why this is even credible at all — on October 1st in Time magazine, he was interviewed about whether he would declare the Insurrection Act, and he said specifically that he might and he wouldn't take it off the table. The Insurrection Act would be the use of the US military, or it could be the National Guard or the reserves, within American cities. That is a huge step. It's rarely been used. And under the circumstances of the environment I am explaining, you can see that first of all there would be an ongoing escalation in just one war, but we now have two wars, and this could be building and building at this point in time, creating the environment in which there is an actual international emergency occurring.
The Insurrection Act is where the president has emergency powers to use the US military — or as I said, the National Guard or the reserves — within the borders of the United States against the citizens of the United States. Normally we have a policy called Posse Comitatus, where the president is not using the US military inside our own borders. For obvious reasons, Steven — a moment in history knows that authoritarian states have routinely used their military to suppress their own population. So the United States, the leading democracy in the world, has gone way out of its way to not go down that road. That's why it's particularly striking when President Trump will not take that option off the table. And if there was not a war, one could look to the courts and think, "Well, if President Trump tried to invoke the Insurrection Act, it could be taken to court and the courts would oppose that act." But we're not in that situation.
Ground Troops in Iran and the Forever War
Bartlett: What happens next in Iran?
Pape: What happens next is now we've pushed all the way to look at how much danger is occurring here, how much economic pressure is occurring. But also notice that the Iranian military, although it's still able to do some strikes, is probably pretty significantly paralysed. They're not 100% paralysed by any stretch. They're able to launch drone strikes, probably missile strikes, probably even cyber attacks, but that doesn't mean it's the same military as exists today before the three-day air war.
Bartlett: There'll be US ground troops in Iran.
Pape: I think yes. I think this is why the Marines are moving. Because under the circumstances of the sequence I've just laid out for you, if people think that when President Trump is talking about moving US Marines in for limited ground operations, this would necessarily be a suicide mission — now, it could be a suicide mission, but this is very unlikely. Much more likely would be the way this played out with Instant Thunder, which is you would paralyse as much as you could of the Iranian military. The Iranian military would still have remnants that are able to attack us pretty severely. Now you have the ground force option to go in to try to deal with localised areas of those remnants, and you have a real reason to do it.
And once we go down this road, Steven, I'm quite concerned that once we start the three-day bombing campaign, this sequence is going to be almost impossible to stop. Because once you start the three-day bombing campaign, this is going to unleash responses by the remaining elements of the Iranian military that can fire at us, and they will be maximally incentivised to fire at the Gulf states' infrastructure. Once you go all the way down this far, now you're in the true forever war. Now you're in the forever war that we can't really get out of. And we are now into a world where this is a true emergency. President Trump will be able to start declaring more and more emergency powers because this will be a true emergency, and it won't be over by Christmas. These eight weeks are the most dangerous eight weeks. But if we go all the way through this trajectory, Steven, this will lead into a devastating 2027.
Bartlett: And lastly?
Pape: Lastly — Russia. We see that if in fact what the defence minister in London is worried about happens, if those cyber attacks happen, there's going to be enormous pressure on Europe to retaliate directly against Moscow. People haven't really experienced cyber warfare. They've heard about it, they've read books about it, there are science fiction books written about it, but they haven't experienced it. What I think many people think is, "Well, the internet goes out for 30 minutes and it just pops right back in. What's the big deal?" This isn't the real set of cyber attacks our government has been worrying about for decades. The real set of cyber attacks are much, much more costly on publics — the American public, the European public. And under those circumstances, those publics are going to demand payback. Then that's when you actually have Europe retaliating against Moscow. And you know what word that is for that, when Europe does that, Steven? World War III. That's what World War III looks like.
Many people for months have been discussing, are we in World War III? The answer is no. We're not in World War III. We have war happening around the world and in major parts of the world. What World War III means is when the world's largest powers attack each other's homelands and their militaries directly engage each other. That is not the situation today. We've been nowhere near that even with all of the escalations that have happened in the Ukraine war.
Bartlett: But aren't we doing that by proxy? Britain just announced yesterday they're going to give another £10 billion to Ukraine. Presumably that money is going to be spent on killing Russians, indirectly or directly. So aren't we in these proxy wars already?
Pape: We were in proxy wars during the Cold War almost every year from 1947 until 1989. We were in proxy wars in Africa, in Latin America. The Soviets went into Afghanistan. We sent in the mujahideen.
Bartlett: The difference is when they attack each other directly.
Pape: Exactly. Proxy wars — we have faced proxy wars almost every year during the Cold War since 1947 and after the Cold War. That is not a world war. If we're going to use the phrase "we're in World War III," then it should have some semblance to World War I and World War II and what those really meant.
Bartlett: That's likely.
Pape: I hope everything we're doing here, Steven, will prevent it. I believe that what we're starting down now — I don't mean eight weeks from now, I mean literally from today forward — we are living through the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives. I believe that if we allow this momentum to carry on on its own, it's going to lead to very, very bad outcomes. And we can do a lot.
Three Firebreaks — What Can Be Done
Bartlett: What can we do?
Pape: Number one is every member of Congress who's still in the lame-duck Congress now, and who's just been elected to Congress, can say one thing: no escalation by the Trump administration in Iran until the new Congress is seated, unless Iran strikes first. Very simple declaration. This is the core firebreak. No escalation on Iran, called for by every member of Congress sitting now who's in the lame-duck Congress and who's just won election to the new Congress. That's step one.
Step number two is, now that we're actually in counting season and certification season, every governor and every mayor should call on President Trump to hold a two-month moratorium on all federally armed agents in their cities unless the governors and mayors call for it. A two-month moratorium. So we take off the table the possibility of violent populism getting out of control. The key sparks — we can't take every spark off, but we can take the key sparks off.
Bartlett: Is there a third one?
Pape: A third one, incredibly important, which is that in all of the conflicts we have just laid out, we have the United States in the middle of them, Iran in the middle of them, Russia in the middle of them. We should have the core countries that are calling themselves mediators — and who are those countries? Pakistan, Qatar, and increasingly India. India has been playing a quiet role behind the scenes with Russia and Ukraine. Those three countries that have played this role as mediator should call on all of the countries to do one thing: hands off civilians. No direct targeting of civilian infrastructure or civilian residential areas by states. Those are the three. If we do those three things, what we're doing is establishing firebreaks on that momentum of the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives, and we do not have to simply watch as those eight weeks unfold.
Bartlett: What about the general public? What should they be doing? Do you take the advice of Wes Streeting? Do you think we should be stockpiling?
Pape: I'm personally not doing that, because what will happen is — let me show you what's really going to happen. Now we're at day one, and let's say day one we still have a lot of water in our bodies. So day one we use one bottle of water. Now we go through day two. Day two of the outage, we have to go through both bottles of water because we're now starting to run out. Now we're at day three — that's what he's told us to do. Here's the fundamental problem, Steven. The attacks can happen again.
Bartlett: You're saying there's no point.
Pape: What I'm saying is there's no point. And what I'm saying is everybody will come to that realisation on day one — this is not going to prevent the panic. This is not going to truly buy time those three days. The way the governments can buy time are those three firebreaks. And what can every ordinary person do? They can email, they can text, and they can call their favourite political leader — whoever that is — and tell them to adopt those three firebreaks. That is how we can navigate this journey and do something about it. Otherwise, we're just letting the events control us.
Bartlett: I was going to ask you the question in the book — the question in the book is basically, what can people do now to prepare for the next five years? But I think you might have just answered it.
Pape: I think I did.
Closing — The Role of Public Discourse and Advising Power
Bartlett: You have this wonderful book that's out now, Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism. You're someone who's so incredibly well read, with decades and decades of the most interesting experience. Anybody interested in these subjects that we've talked about today — this is the definitive book on the subject matter. It is evidence-based. There are lots of stats and graphs and figures in here, but also so deeply read on history as you are, Robert. Thank you for coming here and thank you for continually keeping the lights on for me. I remember the first time you came and I thought, "What's he talking about, escalation trap? There's no chance." But it's completely changed my mind on what's going on in the world and it's actually helped me to understand reality — the complex, messy reality of war and incentives and ego and humans and the human cost on the other end of it. And again, we always talk about Ukraine and Iran, but I think it's worth also remembering that there are millions — tens and tens and tens of millions of people, probably 130 million people combined, 40 million in Ukraine, 90 million in Iran — that are right in the heart of all of this. There are very real people living there trying to live their lives amidst all of this absolute craziness and chaos. And my heart goes out to them.
Pape: And Steven, I just want to say one of the most important things that's happening is social media is not just a problem — you're seeing with your show that social media can be a tremendous help. On the times I've come on your show, we have really laid out some pretty dark scenarios. And after the show, because of so many people, what happens is the questions come to the key leaders. One of the key things when I was on just the last time in July — we talked about how we were just about to unleash a whole series of attacks with CENTCOM to go after Iran's drone network. This would have been a disaster. This would not have ended in improving matters. And there was tremendous momentum building for that — generals, others in the military, ex-military. And I know because what happened after our show is that suddenly what was the reality, the real issues, came to the fore. And that's one of the big reasons I believe we didn't go down that dark road.
Bartlett: It's because of —
Pape: I think it's because of the Diary. I think it's because of the Diary. And I think it's not just the Diary — I think it's because on social media, what we're able to do today that we could not do 20 years ago when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan is we're able to have serious, substantive conversations where we lay out the actual risks and consequences, the true worst cases that could come.
Bartlett: And have you been contacted by anybody at the White House?
Pape: I've advised every White House since 9/11.
Bartlett: Are you advising this one?
Pape: I've advised every White House since —
Bartlett: Have you been contacted by the White House?
Pape: I've advised every White House since 9/11, and I'm incredibly proud of that.
Bartlett: Have you been contacted by the White House? You don't have to tell me who, but since you've come on this show, have they contacted you for advice?
Pape: I've been — I've advised the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and I've advised every White House since 9/11. And your show, among other shows, but your show is a leading show — it raises the profile of the consequences, and that is incredibly important.
Bartlett: Have people contacted you in positions of power?
Pape: Yes.
Bartlett: Because I remember last time you were on the show, I asked you, "Has the White House reached out?" And you said no to me when we first met. So subsequently you've been contacted by people in positions of power.
Pape: Anytime somebody in a position of power reaches out — and that can be in America and outside of America — it is an incredible honour for me to give the best advice I possibly can, and I will continue to do that.
Bartlett: Are you advising the White House?
Pape: I'm just telling you, Steven, that I am incredibly honoured when people of power reach out. And the fact of the matter is, Steven, the best way to influence the world is not always behind closed doors. It does happen sometimes. I'm really trying to tell you that what happens when we explain the actual consequences or the danger zone we're moving into —
Bartlett: I get it. I get it, Robert. This is how it raises the profile.
Bartlett: So are you advising people in power in the United States?
Pape: I'm just telling you people in power have contacted me. It's been a tremendous honour and I'm very glad.
Bartlett: I'm glad they're listening.
Pape: Are they listening? These people in power, Steven — at some point we're going to be able to look back on this and be able to say, "How did we get through this period of time?" And we're going to have those conversations. But the way we're going to do this is —
Bartlett: I'm asking — are they listening? Are the people in power who contacted you listening?
Pape: The people in power who have contacted me do believe — are listening — whether they're in the United States or around the world. And I do believe that one of the big issues here is communicating the true risks that we're running in powerful ways.
Bartlett: Robert, thank you. Thank you for turning the lights on for so many of us and bringing and simplifying complexity. It's all so complex because there's so much rhetoric and propaganda. So it's nice to sit with lots of different people who have lots of different perspectives and have the wealth of experience that you have, and have it laid out to me so that I can really comprehend it. So hopefully we avoid this escalation.
Pape: I believe this is how, if we're going to avoid it. I'm an optimist, and that's why I'm excited to be on your show. Not because I want to see the doom loop, but because I want to see us come to a better world.
Bartlett: I tell you, I'm glad the White House reached out. Thank you, Robert.
Pape: You tried. You're doing good.