Here are excerpts from an extraordinary 54 minute conversation on the current and future wars coming out of the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. With his extensive insights and expertise into the Middle East and American foreign policy, Lawrence Wilkerson provides a valuable understanding into what a Trump presidency may look like outside of the borders of America.
It’s hard to imagine two better matched partners in this conversation. Chris Hedges is a former war reporter for the New York Times, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was a former war planner and chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Christopher Hedges is an American journalist, author, and Presbyterian minister. He reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Hedges currently writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report on YouTube. He is also the author of over 20 books.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is a Vietnam War veteran who attended Airborne School Ranger school and the naval war college. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and went on to serve as deputy director of the Marine Corps War college at Quantico.
His disillusionment with the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy focused on the secretive decision-making by the Bush Administration that led to the invasion of Iraq. Wilkerson has said that the speech Colin Powell made before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, which laid out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which he and Powell had never been made aware. Wilkerson said: “I participated in a hoax on the American people, the International Community, and the United Nations and Security Council.”
Since then Wilkerson taught at the College of William and Mary and George Washington University. He’s a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. That’s a group of former military intelligence and civilian National Security officials, who are countering Washington's establishment narrative on national security issues of the day.
Hedges and Wilkerson spoke on November 7, 2024. Find and watch the conversation for free by searching YouTube for the title: The World According to Trump with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.