I BelieveThe Flying Officer
Thoughts from the week, in podcast conversation form. Joel: The watch is quiet. Dark. Day and night, you don’t know the difference. Joel: Every twelve hours, you set the clock. If it’s more than a second off, fast or slow, it’s out of spec. And you have to set all three clocks at once. Paige: Three clocks, one second. I hear that and feel like it’s important. I suspect you’re going to tell me it didn’t feel that way. Joel: You’re just setting the clock. It’s standard. Wherever we were in the world, we all had to agree on what time it was. Joel: I was a nuclear weapons officer for twenty-one years. For two of them, I commanded one of America’s nine squadrons that keep nuclear missiles on alert and stand ready, day and night. You get used to thinking in a common reference time. Somebody you’re working with could be six time zones away from you, but you still need to know what time it is for both of you. Paige: Zulu time. Joel: Right. You’ll have flashbacks, stories that pop into your head whenever some random event happens. One of those that caught my attention this week was this new Gallet watch. The Flying Officer. It’s only been out a couple of weeks. I haven’t seen one in person and I don’t know that I ever will. I’ve been looking at pictures of the face. Paige: It’s an old name. The first one came out in nineteen thirty-nine. Harry Truman wore one. Joel: Is that right. Joel: There are reference cities around the dial. It’s a twelve-hour face, but when everyone somewhere on the globe operates on a single reference time you’re thinking about a twenty-four-hour day and a twenty-four-hour globe, so two places can share an hour position, twelve hours apart. Joel: London is the reference to start with. Move clockwise, or to the right on the watch face, and it’s like moving east around the globe. Geneva then Cape Town then Nairobi. Go the other way, west into the Atlantic, and you’ve got the Azores. Paige: You’re reading it like a map. Joel: Yes. The globe on your wrist. After twenty-one years it gets ingrained. You think about people being in different time zones. It’s also just an interesting watch. Paige: Fair enough. Joel: Most of that job was waiting, alert. The watch. The capability is there. It’s ready. And the whole point is that you never use it. Joel: That followed me to Leavenworth and to the Army’s Command and General Staff College. Twelve officers in our classroom. I was the only Air Force officer. There was a Marine, a Canadian armor officer, and everybody else was Army. Joel: One exercise we worked through was a thought experiment conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The question was whether we go in, and how much we’d commit to a peacekeeping mission. One of the factions was openly hostile to the U.S. Disrupting our activities in the area. Threatening terrorist attacks. The Marine was confident we should get involved in almost every regional conflict, and that it would be over quick. Joel: Most of the room said yes. I said no. I almost always said no. Paige: Wait. One country punishing people in another. And you said no. Joel: I did. Is it a tragedy? Yes. A vital U.S. interest? No. Would I support partners getting involved? Yes. Independent action? No. Paige: Partners tend to wait for us. Rwanda was a hundred days. Joel: I know. There’s a question of dependency there. And then we’d get to something I thought was important enough. Then what I was willing to accept in casualties was much higher than anybody else in the room. Paige: That sounds backwards. The man who never wants to go is the one who’ll pay the most once he’s there. Joel: Because I was looking at the objective. What were we going to achieve? Joel: The others were more willing to get into smaller conflicts. As a nuclear weapons guy, I’d look at those and think, we’re not going to have a decisive, long-term impact. Our effects need to last for 40 years, maybe even a hundred. Joel: If a major United States interest was threatened, that was different. But those are much bigger conflicts. World wars. Major conflicts involving our partners. Paige: I’ll give you that being able to intervene isn’t a reason to. But decisive is a high bar. Haven’t you walked the tunnels the North Koreans dug under the DMZ? Joel: I have. Paige: Nothing was decided there. No treaty. An armistice, signed in nineteen fifty-three, and two armies still looking at each other across it. By your test, Korea was a waste. Joel: No. It wasn’t. Paige: Seventy years of Seoul. Joel: Okay. Then decisive is the wrong word. Maybe durable. Does it last. Korea has. And we’re still paying to make it hold. That’s a cost I’d accept, for an ally, for a result that lasts that long. Joel: But there’s a cost to every one of those. When you use resources in one regional conflict, you don’t have them for something bigger. Joel: And we start from an extraordinary position. Oceans on both sides. No neighbor about to invade and subdue us. That gives us room to be patient. Joel: America will never lose a war, because nobody can come here and conquer us. Just this week we signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland to increase our presence on that critical piece of geography while denying China and Russia access. Further protecting American security interests in our region. Paige: Hold on. There’s a jump there. Keeping the homeland secure and winning a war abroad are two different things. Joel: I agree that’s a logic jump. What I mean is that no other country is going to subdue the United States on our shores. Joel: When we go somewhere else to fight, of course we can lose. We have a long logistical trail. We are at a disadvantage sustaining what we’re doing. And we can have enormous difficulty achieving our objectives. Paige: Which puts the weight back on the objective. What counts as success, and can the force we’re using produce it? Joel: Exactly. Our strength is in restraint. In having the capability and not always exercising it. Joel: Take Iran. We’ve been at war with Iran since the last day of February. Going on seven months. Joel: I was thinking about Cyrus the Persian this week, and how far back that history goes. Paige: About twenty-six hundred years. Joel: They aren’t going anywhere. Whatever we do over there, they’ll be living there when we’ve gone home. Paige: The country isn’t going anywhere. This government might. Joel: It hasn’t yet. We can blow things up. We’re blockading their ports right now. We can do a lot of things to hurt Iran. If we don’t get a durable American result out of it, what have we achieved? Joel: And I don’t think Israel’s immediate survival was at risk before this started. So why start a war when survival isn’t at risk? Paige: Let me make the case straight, because somebody should. A government that says Israel shouldn’t exist was enriching uranium well past what any power plant needs, even though they had never made a bomb. If the test is immediate survival, then with a bomb, immediate comes after it’s too late. You of all people know what one weapon does to a small country. Joel: I do. One weapon on a small country is a tragedy. But the state will survive. Paige: A lot of that country lives around one city. Joel: I know what I’m saying. If Iran ever used one, the world would stand against them. Israel would survive. That government wouldn’t. And it has spent more than forty years making sure it survives. That’s not a government looking to die. And remember, Iran never built a bomb. Our own intelligence says they had a weapons program and shut it down in two thousand three. Year after year, the same people said they hadn’t restarted it. It’s not in their best interest. Joel: And we had limits on them. Inspectors in the buildings. We walked away from that in twenty eighteen. Paige: The inspectors didn’t stop them from arming Hezbollah. Or Hamas. Or the Houthis. Joel: No. And Israel has been dealing with that. It has plenty of capability to defend itself, which America continues to support. I don’t see it as a threat to the survival of the state. And what’s the alternative? That we should preemptively attack every state that threatens a partner? Paige: Then we disagree about where the line is. Joel: We do. But wherever you put the line, you still have to answer what the war achieves. How do we end this on terms favorable to the United States? Joel: This conflict in Iran could go on for a dozen years. I don’t think we can count on them giving up because we’ve made them suffer enough. Joel: People under bombs don’t quit. London didn’t. Hanoi didn’t. Tokyo didn’t. They dig in, and they blame whoever’s dropping the bombs. Over there, suffering can even be seen as legitimacy. As righteousness. The more pain we inflict, the more of it the regime gets to claim. Paige: They quit in nineteen eighty-eight. Khomeini took the ceasefire with Iraq. He said it was like drinking poison, and he drank it. Joel: After eight years. Paige: After eight years. Joel: That’s my dozen. Paige: And a family burying a son doesn’t feel what the government tells it to feel. Joel: Fair. They aren’t one thing. But look at what each side will put up with. Our prices go up, and we vote out the party responsible. Their people are dying. Their oil isn’t moving. And they’re still shooting at our ships. Paige: One of their lawmakers said it this month. America is far away, so America doesn’t see this war as existential. They do. Joel: So we can’t assume more missiles buy more of the outcome we want. We may just be spending our strength. Paige: I don’t have an answer to that one. So name the outcome. Favorable terms could mean a lot of things. Joel: Ships moving freely through the Strait of Hormuz. A predictable Iranian government that doesn’t threaten other countries in the region. I think that’s it. Paige: Is the strait still ours to care about? Jimmy Carter said we’d go to war for the Gulf. Vital interests. That was nineteen eighty, and we were buying their oil. Joel: We produce so much of our own now. I don’t know that the Middle East is as important to us as it was. Paige: Oil trades in one world market. The strait closes, and the price goes up at a pump in Wyoming. We watched it happen this year. Joel: So we still have an interest. Paige: And everything you listed is a change in behavior. None of it requires Iran to like us. Joel: I don’t think we get past the hostility. The regime’s, at a minimum. We’ve meddled in their affairs too long for them to forget it. Paige: Then a deal has to work with the distrust still in it. And we have to offer something that makes keeping it worthwhile. Joel: I don’t know what we have to offer that we’re willing to give up. Are we going to pull all our bases out of the Middle East? We’re not going to abandon Israel because Iran wants us to. Paige: Those are enormous asks. There are smaller bargains. Money for specific limits we can check. That’s your Kennan essay. A country that’s profiting from an arrangement has something to protect. Friendship not required. Joel: No. And I’d take something like President Obama’s agreement again. Ease the economic pressure in exchange for nuclear limits and inspectors. We should be willing to accept terms like that. Joel: What I don’t hear much of is the Iranian side. What do you think they’re looking for? Paige: Whether the benefit is dependable. We left the last agreement in twenty eighteen, and the inspectors said they’d been keeping it. We want to know they’re keeping the limits. They want to know that keeping the limits gets them what they were promised. Joel: Yeah. Go on. Paige: So it’s a question about us. Can we hold a bargain through a change of presidents? Your patience applies to keeping a deal, not only to making one. Joel: What does dependable mean to you? Paige: Something they can use. Picture being told you can sell oil, but no bank will process the payment, because the bank thinks sanctions are coming back. Permission on paper. Nothing in the account. Dependable doesn’t mean unconditional. It means the terms for keeping it or losing it are clear. Joel: What they say in public is a lot bigger than that. Tolls on tankers through Hormuz. Lift sanctions. Our bases out of the Middle East. And the hostility to Israel existing isn’t going away. Paige: Some of that’s an opening bid. Some of it they won’t move on. We don’t know which is which, and we can’t assume. Joel: And we still have to make it hold. I think that takes other actors. I go back to the DMZ. Somebody standing in between. Paige: Korea’s an odd model. That command is American-led. It isn’t neutral. But the idea travels. A third party both sides accept, so nobody has to take the other’s word. Joel: Yes. Paige: Then the monitors report our violations as loudly as theirs. Joel: I think that’s a result of this war we won’t be able to avoid. Paige: And it has to hold after the people who signed it are gone. Ours and theirs. Joel: Right. Paige: Let’s go back to the Zulu time thing. What happens to the clocks when you go off watch? Joel: Somebody else sets them. Every twelve hours. Paige: And if nothing happens? Joel: Then it was a good watch. Sources Gallet Flying Officer Gallet & Co. “Flying Officer Automatic 40 — AG1701131C1A1.” 2026.https://www.gallet.com/ca-en/watches/flying-officer/flying-officer-automatic/AG1701131C1A1/ Hodinkee. “The Gallet Flying Officer.” August 2026.https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-gallet-flying-officer U.S. Nuclear Forces Congressional Research Service. U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues, RL33640.https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33640.html Korea and the Armistice United Nations Command. “Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953.” The 1953 Korean Armistice established the DMZ, Military Armistice Commission, and Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. United Nations Command — Armistice Negotiations United Nations Command. “Military Armistice Commission — Secretariat.” Current information on administration, monitoring, inspections, and enforcement of the Korean Armistice Agreement. United Nations Command — UNCMAC Secretariat Iran’s Nuclear Program and the JCPOA International Atomic Energy Agency. Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2025/24. June 2025.https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pdf Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. National Intelligence Estimate. 2007.https://fas.org/publication/nie_on_irans_nuclear_program_n/ U.S.–Iran Conflict Council on Foreign Relations. “Confrontation Between the United States and Iran.” Global Conflict Tracker. August 2026.https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/confrontation-between-united-states-and-iran Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Iran and the Emerging Security Order in the Middle East.” 2026.https://www.csis.org/analysis/iran-and-emerging-security-order-middle-east Institute for the Study of War. “Iran Update Special Report: U.S. and Israeli Strikes.” February 28, 2026.https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-special-report-us-and-israeli-strikes-february-28-2026/ Congressional Budget Office. Estimated Costs of Operation Epic Fury. September 2026.https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-09/62756-Iran.pdf Strait of Hormuz and Energy U.S. Energy Information Administration. “World Oil Transit Chokepoints.”https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/special-topics/world_oil_transit_Chokepoints Institute for Energy Research. “New EIA Report Shows Extent of Hormuz Oil Disruptions.” 2026.https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/gas-and-oil/new-eia-report-shows-extent-of-hormuz-oil-disruptions/ The Carter Doctrine Carter, Jimmy. “The State of the Union Address Delivered Before a Joint Session of the Congress.” January 23, 1980. The American Presidency Project. This is the address in which Carter declared an attempt by an outside power to control the Persian Gulf an assault on U.S. vital interests that could be repelled by military force. Jimmy Carter — 1980 State of the Union Address Arctic and Greenland Security Reuters / The Guardian. “US and Denmark Reach Security Deal After Trump’s Threats to Take Over Greenland.” September 18, 2026.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/18/united-states-denmark-greenland-security Strategic Bombing and Coercion Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
