Angry Planet - How Ukraine Wins

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Joining your faithful Angry Planet crew this week are Rose Gottemoeller and Michael Ryan, both national security experts and both with a strong view that the war in Ukraine can still be won. And they'll even tell you how, if you listen to this week's show.You can read more of their thoughts in Foreign Policy: Ukraine Has a Pathway to VictoryAngry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Yeah, so today we are talking about Ukraine and with two people who actually think that Ukraine could win, which right now is sounding more and more like a minority view. So Mike Ryan, Rose Gottmiller, which one of you want to sort of just take us through the article. As we're taking stock of where things stand with the war in Ukraine, the maps that have gone up on news shows all over the United States have shown that really the line hasn't moved, that the much vaunted counteroffensive that the Ukrainians undertook last summer has failed to achieve much in the way of territorial. real gains. And so there's no question that the war is stalemated. But to me, what people haven't been paying attention to is the really significant success that the Ukrainians have achieved in places where they have had some maneuverability at sea and in the air. And they have essentially been able to deny the Russians the use of Sevastopol, the military naval base on the peninsula of

Crimea, that that was the reason they invaded in 2014, right? They wanted Crimea to be theirs and so that they could use the naval base without any regard for Ukraine or certainly having to pay Ukraine any rent for it. So now they are actually denied use of bases all across Crimea by the way the Ukrainians have been very clever using both their power at sea but also their air power and indigenous missile capability and also missile capability that they're acquiring from NATO allies. So there's been this significant success

in control of airspace and control at sea, but people aren't taking account of that. So Mike and I started talking about it and thinking, hmm, if there's a chance to renew mobility in the ground setting as well, can we translate that success strategically and operationally, denying the Russians impunity in the air and at sea, can we help them, the Ukrainians then,

to get moving again on land? And Mike, I thought, really had some good ideas that cast back to how NATO was thinking about this back during the Warsaw Pact era. So, Mike, over to you. Yeah, and Mike, if you don't mind just telling a little bit who you are also so the audience knows. And Rosa, I apologize, I should have asked you for the same. Yeah, thank you. I started my Air Force career as an A-10 pilot in the central region in Europe at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s. And of course, we were confronted then, as Rose mentioned, with the potential onslaught

of the Soviet-backed Warsaw Pact and thousands of thousands of tanks coming against us in echelon. And the A-10 and a few other forward elements of the Army were really the covering force to try to blunt the assault and then contribute to the ability of the army to maneuver on the battlefield where we could use superior weaponry and superior firepower to out maneuver and therefore defeat these massive echelons of Soviet troops that were coming at us that were all covered by layered air defenses so when rose and i were talking her analysis which i think is exactly right about the Ukrainian's ability to succeed in the sea and in the air,

brought me back to those days where we had the same challenge. And so from that experience, I also went to work with the Army on the ground on this concept that we call the Joint Air Attack Team. I spent most of my career in Europe, and then was working at headquarters U.S. European Command as a senior leader, but also at the U.S. mission to NATO, and at NATO headquarters as a senior leader,

which is where I got to meet Rose. So with that background, we had this discussion as Rose, mentioned. And I thought about what drove us to develop this joint air attack team concept. And it was really necessity because we had great weapons, but we didn't have enough of them. And we had an enemy that was fairly predictable what they were going to do and fairly doctrinal. It's the same challenge that the Ukrainians have. They have very good weaponry, perhaps not enough. They have a very innovative spirit. And they're using the weapons that were giving them and the weapons they're developing in really ways we hadn't thought about, which is what the joint air attack

team did. We used attack helicopters and close air support aircraft like the A10, but others, and artillery in ways that we really hadn't thought about. And it came down to the Army and the Air Force talking together about how we could stay out of each other's way first. We really, because in a battlefield, there's a lot of stuff flying through the air and you first have to stay out of each other's way. And then we realized once we learned about each other's tactics, that we could combine those tactics and do great things. And so the genesis of our conversation led to the idea that the United States and our European allies through NATO can continue to help the Ukrainians deal with battlefield complexity, first staying out of each other's

way, and then building some combined effects and synergistic effects using the weapons they have in ways that perhaps those weapons weren't intended to be used. And so that's where we started to think about. The Ukrainian mindset demonstrated Ukrainian success. And I took a look at the list of security assistance, so all the weapons that the United States and the Europeans have been giving to the Ukrainians. And it's classic force-on-force, what we refer to as heavy metal, tanks and artillery is just slugging it out in the trenches. And it's no wonder we've gotten to where we are, because that's the kind of thing that we've been given to Ukrainians. So with some adjustments to our security cooperation perspective and to our interactions with the Ukrainians,

building on their demonstrated success at CNN in the air, and with a view towards the fact that the Ukrainians have limited numbers and the Russians are continuing to increase their number, how can the Ukrainians exploit this Russian proclivity to just throw soldiers forward and take casualties? and how can the Ukrainians then get local superiority where they can overwhelm the static defenses? Because they've done a great job but treating the logistics chains and the chains of command and the supply depots behind the lines. It's at the line where the Ukrainians need to find an advantage. And so that was what we were thinking. So you mentioned specifically that we're talking about things like drones. and I mean, truly, you know, the modern high-tech warfare rather than tanks and what did the Ukrainians, I mean, how did they render sea power and take it off the table?

I think I don't really understand, you say, you know, really that's been a big success. But I don't know what the Russians aren't doing that they would like to be doing. So if you could sort of explain what's happening and how it happened, that'd be really great. Yeah, I think the best way to talk about it is to talk about what happened after the grain deal shut down last summer. Remember that at that point, the Russians were being very uncooperative. They stopped carrying out the regularized inspections. They were slow rolling everything. And in the end of the day, they just pulled the plug on the UN-sponsored grain deal.

And they said at the same time, and any commercial ship that comes into the Black Sea, we will consider a potential target, potentially carrying weapons to the Ukrainians. So the Ukrainians at that point said, no, no, we are going to figure out another way. We are going to figure out a way to ensure that we can continue to get our grain and other foodstuffs out of our ports, even while the ports are being pounded by Russian missiles. we are going to figure out a way to continue commercial shipments and also getting interesting that obviously the Ukrainians are big in metal production too, metallurgy and getting metal products out in addition to food stuff. So it's been a way for them to keep their economy ticking over. But they went about it by establishing an air defense zone, essentially, along the coast from Odessa

to where. the NATO territory picks up at Romania. And they said, basically, we're going to be able to protect this zone out to 100 kilometers. And you can operate here, commercial ships. And they talk to the shipping companies. They talk to the insurance companies. They got everybody to agree. And then once the ships are approaching NATO, basically NATO territory and NATO literal as well along the Black Sea coast,

then the Russians didn't dare to attack commercial shipping. in that zone as well. And so it has been with some fits and starts. Clearly, the Russians continue to pound the ports, and there have been worries about them placing mines in this area. But the Ukrainians have exercised, I would say, significant sea control to ensure their commercial shipping. Over the holidays, I was reading that over 400 ships, approaching 500 ships now have passed out of the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports. So essentially they thumbed their noses at the Russians and said, we don't need your grain deal anymore. We're going to do this by exercising control of the sea for the commercial shipping lines. And the insurance companies have bought it. So I think that's a good

example of how the Ukrainians have gone about establishing sea control. And they've been doing the same thing with airspace. I want to stress that, you know, the drones are not such high-tech drones. The Ukrainians are great missileers. They were the ones who built the gigantic Soviet-era ICBMs like the SS18, what NATO calls the Satan ICBM, huge thing that can carry, has carried 10 or more warheads. So the Ukrainians know all about missiles, but they've taken that down to a very fine grain in turning out a lot of drones, thousands of drones, sometimes in very low-tech kinds of workshops. Right. I want to stress because when we say drone, I think a lot of people have in their, the

image in their mind of like the birectar or a reaper. But Ukraine is making incredible use of a lot of this off-the-shelf stuff. They're dropping, it's just a quadcopter dropping munitions on top of the tank, right, which has been just a game changer for them on the ground, right? They've been using everything they can get their hands on. They've been building stuff themselves. So, yeah, there's no question about it. It goes from the very low-tech. up to the very high-tech capabilities that some of the NATO countries have been supplying. All right. So it's this concept, which they applied to Sevastopol, which has been a key aspect of their ability to ship grain, as Rose was speaking about.

Putting Sevastopol at risk has forced the Russians to move a lot of their weapon systems further and further away from the drain corridor that's coming out of Ukraine with the shipping that Rose talked about. So all of this goes hand in hand, and it shows the level. of complexity of the Ukrainian strategists and how they're very carefully moving forward on many, many fronts at the same time. So if we apply that to the ground warfare, again, thinking about drones, because the idea is to achieve an asymmetric overmatch in a specific place in order to, A, surprise the Russians, B, to provide enough mass that localized Russian forces that are facing this Ukrainian onslaught can't deal with it, while at the same time, using their deeper

fires to interrupt the ability of the Russians to reinforce and to interrupt their command and control so they don't understand what's going on. And so that's what they've been doing at sea, to some degree in the air. Now we're applying that to the land. What did you call asymmetric over? Asymmetric overmatch. I love that. I, you know, that's, I apologize for my ignorance, but that's a new phrase to me. And I think I'm going to use it now in a variety of places where it's completely inappropriate. It could get added to meeting being able if you're successful. So people really did think, I didn't know what it happened.

I knew that the grain deal was off. I didn't know so much grain was actually getting out. It's amazing. They've done an incredible job. And, you know, partially it's what Mike was talking about, that they've had to move their naval ships back to Novo Racizk on the Russian mainland, rather than having them forward on the Crimean Peninsula and Sevastopol and in other naval bases there. But part of it is just the fact that I think also, and let's remember to be honest, that the Russians too need to ship grain and they need to get their

grain out of the Black Sea also. So there is a little bit of a mutual interest here as well. They can't be shooting at each other's commercial vessels in the end of the day if either wants to succeed at shipping grain. Yeah, I should note that we're having this conversation on the 12th last night. A coalition of Western forces began an attack on the Houthis in the Red Sea. It does strike me as the Russian calculate, like you don't attack international shipping, right, because everyone's calculations change. and Ukraine's partners may have a very different view of Russia and what they're willing to do militarily if suddenly grain shipments aren't getting to the rest of the world, right? Yes, and I think it's very interesting that parallel as well to consider right now

with what the Houthis are up to and the amount of really cooperation among NATO and Western powers that has had to be put in place to ensure that shipping does continue through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It's interesting, looking back, remember the Somali pirates back 10 years ago? They were not using such high-tech stuff. They were basically boarding and taking hostages, but really interrupting shipping along with Somali coast and the Horn of Africa at that point. but that was a very effective international coalition that shut them down. Now we've got a higher tech problem because these guys are using missiles. So what happened with the spring that became the summer that didn't become the winter offensive?

I mean, did it, and I guess what I'm more interested in is the political aspect. How much was Ukraine counting on success? How much was actually Joe Biden counting on success in order to. to keep people the aid flowing and people's morale up outside of Ukraine as well as inside. Well, I'll be interested to hear Mike's comment on this. My view is that the biggest problem is the Russians had months in which to build up their defenses, to defend their forward lines, to put in minefields in depth, and to ensure that the Ukrainians couldn't punch through quickly, even if they were able to mass a huge amount of force that they would be stymied

because they wouldn't have the ability to get through those minefields. So I think that one of the, I'm concerned that one of the problems about the major offensive was that we built up this notion of Ukrainian success over some months while the Russians were actually digging in. And that created an impossible situation for the, you know, Ukrainians to overcome. But Mike, what's your comment on this? Well, first of all, I do completely agree with Rose, and we have to think about why the Russians were given that much time. There was a great expectation when the Ukrainians were able to turn the tables on the Russians, push them very far away from Kiev, and then collapsed the northern

part of the Russian flank. That, actually, in my view, coupled with the need to deal with the potential for escalation vis-a-vis either. Russians and their nuclear threats slowed down the supply chains. And we had a lot of discussion over, do we give them M1s? Do we give them tanks? Do we give them F-16? Do we give them this? We give them that. Any one of those or any group of those weapon systems, had we started to give them to the Ukrainians as soon as they started to show success, would have arrived in time to interrupt some of the Russian preparations. And the Russians have been in eastern Ukraine for a long time, and they have a lot of defensive positions.

But they really were given the time because of our partiness and supplying Ukraine with the things that they needed to really mount an offensive when the opportunity still existed to have an impact. And again, the Russian morale, the whole Russian supply system, the Russian political system had not yet reset to the point where they had the resolve to stand up to it. And so there was a moment there where exploitation was possible.

And I really think we missed the moment, mostly out of self-determence, but also out of a real misunderstanding of how long it takes to move significant amounts of military equipment that far to get the Ukrainians spun up on how to use them effectively and to get the munition supply lanes out to the front. Because when you're in combat, you use more munitions than you think you're going to. And so there's always a shortage. And had we been able to envision the demands of a successful Ukrainian offensive and supply them accordingly on the schedule that would have been a mismatch for the Russians' ability to reconstitute, then we would have been in a better position. But I completely agree with Rose. Initial Ukrainian success created such high expectations that the Ukrainians were invincible and that the equipment we'd already given them was sufficient. that we forgot to think in terms of Russian military history that they always get their clock cleaned early,

but they reconstitute very, very quickly, and they come back with a vengeance. And it's that vengeance that we're dealing with now. I want to really footstomp that point because Putin has very proudly and publicly put his whole economy on a war footing now with everything from, you know, bakeries to bicycle shops now turning out drones themselves

in Russia. They do have that kind of capability to command the economy that, well, not many other countries want to make those moves because they have other concerns about social welfare and so forth. But Putin's moved in that direction. The other thing I want to pick up on is the point Mike made about nuclear threats. I have read, and this is in the media, it's public, that there was a moment when the Ukrainians were driving south. as well in the fall of last year. We're driving south and getting very close to crossing the Nippur River, the Nipro River, and breaking through Russian lines down toward the south. And apparently, our intelligence agencies at that point judged that Putin actually ask his general staff

about using nuclear weapons to try to halt the Ukrainian advance. Apparently, the general staff advised him that nuclear weapons would not have that kind of utility in this case. I don't know the full details, but I do think that there was a significant nuclear threat at that point that did raise a lot of concerns in Washington and across the NATO allies as well. And I think that too had an effect. You talked about self-determence, Mike, but I do think it was a real concern about how do we prevent this thing from going nuclear because that's not going to be good for anybody. And so there was, I think, a breaking effort, a bit of a breaking effort that also might have affected the flow of assistance to Ukraine at that point. But you're quite right, Mike, also,

that it just takes time and it took time to get the Ukrainians trained up on the Western equipment, on the NATO supplied equipment. And so that's that. too was a very important factor. Jason, I also think it's important. Self-determference is not necessarily a negative. I mean, it's what responsible people do. They have to reflect on the worst-case scenarios and the potential consequences,

particularly dealing with someone as unpredictable in a predictable way as President Putin. And they are more privy to information that we don't have, and so one has to give them the benefit of the doubt on this. And then you couple that with the situation that Rose rightly pointed out where there was a real understanding that has been made public that this was a situation that's tailor-made for tactical nuclear weapons. And then you think about what is the endgame in Russia if Putin loses?

And how does that affect everything? And since his prospects should he lose aren't really tremendous from his personal point of view, you really have to understand that at some point he goes all in. And with the economy as a command economy now being on a complete war footing, we might say that he's all in, which raises the stakes. Does that mean you think that he may use nuclear weapons? They seem to have broken or dialed back from their nuclear saber rattling that was going on during the first year of the war and into last fall. They seem to really have dialed back on that with the notion that, well, they seem to be doing all right. And Putin expected the West to flag at some point and our attention to turn elsewhere.

And so he's excellent at playing the waiting game. And so for him, he's on, you know, he's generally in a positive place at the moment. Things are on a roll from his perspective. And so he's able to dial back the nuclear threats. Well, and where else is there for them to go at this point other than launching one, right? You know, the cable TV over there is full of, not veiled, over nuclear threats they've pulled out of all of the treaties. They are talking about possibly doing, you know, testing again, if America does testing again.

It's constant over there. I don't know much more that he could do that wouldn't be just deploying one, But I don't know that that would, again, I think that would like the shipping things that would change the calculations of everybody. Right. It would, and I don't know if, uh, how threatened he feels at the moment. It feels like he's succeeding without having to, to move forward, uh, with, uh, these nuclear, uh, saber rattling events. Uh, I grant you that, uh, over on the, the media side that, that some of that continues. But I, I just see it as being dialed way back from where it was.

a year ago, certainly. And so I think that that in general is a good thing, but it's a sign that Putin feels that he's, I think, in a commanding position at the moment. And he just has to wait us out. All right, angry planet listeners. We're going to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this.

All right, angry planet listeners, welcome back. I have to admit, I don't know what success and failure look like anymore. I don't know. are we still on the Ukrainian side talking about expelling the Russians from all Ukrainian territory? And if Putin loses, does it mean that he loses that territory? Anyway, you know what I mean? I'm just not sure what – we used to – it used to feel so clear. And now I'm not even sure what it is that we're all trying to accomplish.

Success for the Ukrainians, first and foremost, you're right to say, okay, what does that success look like? My own personal view of this is, as many in Washington say, the Ukrainians will let us know when they're feeling at a good enough position that they're in a strong place to negotiate. And I think that that's first and foremost the most important consideration. It doesn't mean that every Russian soldier, as Zelensky is fond of saying, every Russian soldier has to be expelled from every centimeter of Ukrainian territory. I think it is going to be very, very important no matter what for Ukraine not to give up on the principle of its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

And the United States and NATO allies and partners must do everything they can to continue to support that principle on the side of the Ukrainians. We forget that throughout the Cold War and the 70 years of the Soviet Union, after they seized the Baltic states, the United States never... acknowledged or recognized that the Baltic states were part of the USSR. And that was a sore point, a very sore point with the USSR. But I think it's that kind of position that we have to sustain. And maybe it's going to be for the long haul. I certainly hope not, but we have to sustain that position. Excuse me, Jason. Let me just jump in right there. Of course, I agree with Rose. But from a military planning point of view, the lack of a clearly stated strategic objective, for NATO allies and the United States military that allows us then to backwards plan

to determine what sorts of equipment and what sorts of training and assistance we need to continue to give to the Ukrainian armed forces puts us in a gray area where we tend to just give them whatever we have available as opposed to designing a winning strategy based on a clear objective.

So if we think from a U.S. point of view and our needs to deal with the Russians and the Chinese moving forward, where is the intersection between a negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians are willing to live with that does all the things that Rose talked about, and our ability to help them get there based on a clear statement of our own objectives in the conflict? Because, again, a clear statement of our own objectives then tells our military forces and our allies how to help the Ukrainians achieve that negotiated statement. So that's, I think, where the conversation needs to go

so that what the Ukrainians define as victory, we believe is achievable, one of the reasons for our article, and that we then align our assistance to help them get there. Because without defining, as you said, you don't understand what that is. So that does actually relate back to the nuclear issue, because we've seen this week the Russians

And the Belarusians have now stated that they have a nuclear capability resident in Belarus who are soon to have one. And we've never really made a serious effort to negotiate away the Russian tactical nuclear arsenal. Because to defend a country as large as they are, they need that arsenal. Otherwise, they're going to have a huge military because of the way they perceive their own strategic vulnerabilities. But those are area denial weapons. Russian troops aren't really able to operate in an environment at which a tactical nuclear weapon has been used. And therefore, they're more defensive than offensive. And if Putin's goal is to take over the entire territory of Ukraine and use it as part of greater Russia,

and using tactical nuclear weapons in there is not going to help them achieve that aim. And I think the general staff made that very clear to it. Is that what victory still looks like to him? do you think the complete and utter surrender of Ukraine? Or is it just about holding on the Luhansk, Densk, all the stuff that he already took? Yeah. He still, you know, when asked, we'll talk about denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. Denotsification is code word for regime change for, you know, getting rid of the current Ukrainian government under President Zelensky.

Frankly, I think that those initial objectives have already been denied to him. When Russia failed to take Kiev in the opening month of the war, I think that those strategic objectives were denied to Putin and to the Russian regime. So how exactly he thinks about his strategic objectives now, he'll continue to articulate those denotification, demilitarization, neutral status for Ukraine. but I'm not sure that the Kremlin or he believes them anymore. Actually, I did ask the right question. I would just add, because he is so agile, demonstrates guile at every turn, there's probably a difference between what he would like to have

and what he's willing to accept in the near term. Because you don't need to put the economy on a war footing and take the casualties that they're taking to hold the line in Ukraine. And they're not really operating from the standpoint of we need to restore Russian superiority to Ukraine, excuse me, to Crimea and the Black Sea in order to consolidate our gains in eastern Ukraine. We thought for many, many years before offensive operations renewed in Ukraine in 2022, that they would take more of eastern Ukraine. They would take the land bridge to Crimea and they would try to push to Odessa. and that would be sufficient because that enhances Russia's strategic position and gives it really all the cards in the region. But that's military strategy.

It's not necessarily Putin's thinking. So I don't see them yet changing their approach to one of consolidating their gains. They still are very offensively oriented. How long they're able to maintain that remains to be seen. And so I think there's a difference between what he aspires to and what he's objectively willing to accept for the time being based on the realities that are confronting him if he sees the reality at all. It's all about his personal survival, which is something Mike has already mentioned. He can declare victory probably at any point and say we've achieved our goals. And that's it.

he essentially needs to have enough face saved to stay in power and not himself be subjected to a coup or rapid ejection from his position as president of the Russian Federation. I don't see any sign of that happening. He's been very successful at consolidating power, strengthening the security services, and bringing them to heal, particularly after the defeat of Progosian. and the Wagner attempted, well, it wasn't a coup. It was a march on Moscow last summer. And once Progossian's assassination was complete with a plane accident late in the summer, I think Putin was definitely back, the man on top of the heap. So Byzantine. I mean, you know, the way he even went about getting rid of Progoshan was fascinating.

I mean, that he had to give him the handshake first, then blow up his plane. I mean, it's just so. Sometimes you want to look the other guy in the eye, right? Right, I guess. Yeah, you can't make this stuff up. You really can't. It's funny to look at how much they've invested in this war versus how much they have invested in prior wars. You know, we talk about how they've, you know, they're raising 300,000 troops or they're trying to get, you know, another, they're actually opening.

the prisons, as you know, and I've actually, the Washington Post had a horrible article, well done, but a horrible article about some of the mass killers who they've actually now allowed into their front lines. I just find it fascinating that, you know, they were able to raise tens of millions of people and now they're, you know, they're having some trouble filling up ranks in the hundreds of thousands. It just sort of, does that mean there's some level of commitment or some danger to Putin that we should be taken to account? I think has thought hard about the reaction to the mobilization in September of 2022 when they tried mass mobilization, 700,000 able-bodied young men,

cream of the crop, many of them, you know, working in the IT industries and other high-technology industries, they left the country and went elsewhere. And so, and that was a point at which there was, I think, real concern in Putin's coterie about, about public, the public turning against the war. What he's tried to do, he and his guys have tried to do, is essentially make this a, not a war, but an operation, a special military operation. And you, the public of Russia, you don't need to worry about it. It's just off there in the distance. It's not going to affect the way you live. You can just remain indifferent to it.

But if he tried another mobilization, I think they continue to fear. He would, again, maybe see the public finally begin to rise up and oppose the war. So in the end of the day, they've tried all these other ways. And these people are being brought out of prisons. These horrible criminals are being brought out of prison and signing contracts to go and fight. and then when their contracts are up, essentially their prison terms are being forgiven, and they're ending up back in the communities, which is what is so horrific. And I know women in Russia who have been abused by these men are concerned that they're walking free.

So, yeah, there could be problems emerging from that approach eventually, but I think it's a lesser evil for Putin and the guys in the Kremlin than another attempt at mass mobilization and a big effort of that kind. Well, Jason also think the previous excursions Putin has engaged in after his disastrous and then victorious attempts in Chechnya. They've really been to create frozen conflicts to keep Georgia and others away from embracing the West and becoming members of NATO, as well as his adventurism in Africa, for example, with the Wagner Group and in other parts of the world, coupled with the disinformation campaigns, coupled with his on-off again relationship with China and Xi Jinping, which is now much as detriment, which is something that we can't forget.

So it's more of a long-term campaign to negate the advantages of the United States and its Western allies and Asian allies in an advance of more authoritarian friendly attitudes in the global South and elsewhere. So we're very focused on Ukraine, but we have to look at it from Putin's master gamesmanship perspective on how not only to advance Russia's interest, but how to weaken the United States and its allies and how to really change the nature of the global system, which is very much what Xi Jinping is after as well. And so this gets back to what is the U.S. strategic objective in Ukraine. And it has to consider the impact, as you mentioned earlier, on all these other aspects of our foreign policy.

and how we want to lead in the world going forward. And that's why having a pathway to victory in Ukraine is really so vitally important. And as we talked about, that will be a victory that the Ukrainians determine. But without us stating what that looks like, either having the Ukrainians stated or we state it, it's going to be very hard to know how to support them and to get them the right types of weapons and the right types of assistance they need to be able to have the breakthroughs that are required to get to the point where they're willing to take a pause. The very staying power of the United States of America and its allies is also very important

to model at this moment because I think once again that notion that the United States and its allies will not stay the course, that is being watched. It's being expected now by Putin and the Kremlin, but also being watched very carefully in Beijing as they consider their future options and particularly with regard to Taiwan. So I think there are a lot of ways that it is important for the United States and its NATO allies to stay the course in working with Ukrainians. The world does look more dangerous. I mean, the U.S. seems involved on more fronts than I can actually remember. I mean, you know, I've only been around for half a century. Some of that was the Cold War. I'm not saying that things are worse than ever before, in my opinion.

I'm saying, though, that boy, are we engaged on a lot of fronts. Is this in any way sustainable? Is there any will among the American people to keep this up and see Ukraine through? I'll think the silence speaks volumes. Sorry, Matt, go ahead. I said the silence speaks volumes. Well, I think that's the question we're all grappling with. as we enter into this election season.

And where is the American voter going to be on this? When you talk to people now on Capitol Hill, both Republicans and Democrats are very supportive of the Ukrainians. But it's a particular faction of the Republican Party that is keeping assistance for Ukraine from getting across the finish line, and they can do so procedurally. So is that that's not a majority position by any means.

but it does mean that influential minorities can have a big impact on U.S. policy and where U.S. policy is going ahead. So I do think that we have to bear that in mind and really make the case to the American public through this election period about how important this is for our own future, for our own future security and defense. Well, I absolutely agree. I think part of the silence was we were deferring to one another. but I'll take it a moment to think. Really, with Iran and North Korea jumping in on the side of Russia, and with China's ambitions firmly in focus, we have to look at all of these activities in the way Iran is using its proxies in the Middle East

and Israel is fighting back. And again, there's majority support for Israel in the Congress as well. And we look at the holistic approach to a campaign to reduce the power, of the United States and the world that's been joined together by the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and North Koreans, and others. All this activity may bring us to a culminating point in which are adversaries who do not have the power that we possess in the United States and in the West are going to generate so much fear or concern in the American body politic and in our European allies and our Asian allies that we're going to be. We're in our American body politic and in our European allies,

that we're going to, you know, put the remote for the TV down and start to pay attention. And we're going to realize we're going to have to deal with this collectively and holistically. And we're going to have to go further than we'd like to go. But we see the necessity of going against the Iranians, against the North Koreans of putting or put down in the South China Sea as the Filipinos and the Indonesians are doing yesterday with the president of Indonesia and the Philippines talking about South China Sea. that this culminating point where our adversaries are seeing an opportunity based on the Ukraine conflict and are therefore jumping in on the bandwagon for their own respective interests to try to build a momentum that they think can overwhelm Western political will it has to come to a head at some point

and when it comes to a head we on our side not to make it a binary but it can ultimately become binary We on our side have the power and the capability because we run the global economy. All those ships that the Houthis are firing out, yeah, they're imports for us, but they're exports for other people who care too. And so if those exports don't get through to the importers, then the people that are exporting, they'll make the money. So you get the battle for the global south then becomes economic. And as you pointed out earlier, Jason, the power of that economic focus to get people's attention on other things to which they don't normally pay attention is so powerful. with this culminating point that I think we're getting to quite rapidly as other bad actors join in. We saw the expansion of the bricks and now South Africa is a brick and now it's suing Israel and the World War.

So much of this is related and so much of it is, if you will, part of the plan of the autocratic regimes to change the nature of the global system, that it's going to come to a point where we are going to do something about it. We're going to have to do something collectively about it. So it takes education of the voters and the American populace and the populations of our allies. And that's one of the things that we're very much engaged in through an organization called Friends of Europe and Brussels to really change the narrative back to something positive that looks after our interests and shows our power and our ability to make a difference and to get the world back on a positive track. And we're very much involved in that. And that's why it's very important to be on your podcast and thank you again for the invitation.

Not that we're at the end of your time, but I wanted to sneak that in there. We really appreciate it on your podcast. No, we're really, really lucky to have you. Yeah. Last thing I was going to say, Matthew, then I see a look on your face, which tells me that you have probably a smarter question than mine. But what I was unsure about, you know, when we're talking about these and all the various fronts and the various things that we're doing in a defense budget that's very close to $900 billion this year. I worry about every interceptor that we launch. I worry about every rocket and iron dome.

All of these various things are so expensive. Every tomahawk missile that gets launched. How can we do this for a long time? Can we do this as long as we need to do this in order to keep ourselves and our allies safe and maybe even, you know, put the authoritarian nations back on their heels a little bit. But emphasizing a point that President Trump always was bringing to NATO when I was NATO Deputy Secretary General, and that is that NATO allies of the United States have to bear their share of the defense burden as well.

And I actually think that that is a good result of this dreadful, terrible war in Ukraine that Russia has perpetrated. It has driven that message home to the actually. allies that they need to also bear responsibility for their own defense. And we see it in the way defense industries in Europe are retooling, are getting up and running. And oh, by the way, it's required us to do a considerable amount of modernization and refurbishment of our defense industries as well. We are in it for the long haul. I think there's no question about it. We are going to have to continue to ensure that we are ready should we have to face up to malign actors, these authoritarian regimes who seem to feel like this century is their century. So we need to,

I think, continue to defend what we stand for, which is the rule of law and predictability for the entire global community, both in terms of economy, but also in terms of politics and security. So I think that the United States and its allies together need to play that role. It can't be the United States alone. But I am heartened to see by the experience of the last two years that the Allies have gotten the message, allies in NATO Europe, but also are allies in Asia, the ROK and Japan, as well as Australia and New Zealand. So let's see where it goes. But definitely people are paying attention now and ready at least, at least in some sense, to take the right steps in terms of resources and modernization and preparation of defense industries

for production over a long period of time. I don't like to perpetrate this message, but that's the way it is. I think we do need to be ready. Yeah. Jason, by way of saying yes, there's three points I'd like to make. First is, as Rose just said, yesterday, Terry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market in the European Union, announced that they will meet their goal in early 2024 of creating a million artillery shells for the Ukrainians within the European Union. That's what he said. We'll see. But the effort is there,

certainly, and they're really committed to it. And that's from the European Commission. It really doesn't have a European security and defense role in the body politic of the European Union. And that's doing that hand in glove with what's going on at NATO. So that's very positive. The second thing is, in the early 1930s, the Army Air Force wanted nothing to do. do with the B-17 because it was too damn expensive. And we ended up building thousands of them in World War II. So there is a capacity there based on need. And so the third point I want to make is one of the advantages of having this focus on how well

the Ukrainians are doing and how innovative they are, especially in air and sea and how we can apply that to the land, is we always in the United States have a lot of weapons and development. We call them black programs. We don't tell anybody about them. But they're always in development. And the reality of the war on the ground in Ukraine and the war in the air and at sea has given impetus to the development of these weapons. And the emphasis in the Congress, particularly in raising the defense budget, is we need to bring these weapons like hypersonics to the inventory faster. And these are the types of weapons that really give us an asymmetric overmatch that do things like the F-1-7.

in the first Gulf War that we revealed on the first night of bombing, that no one can match. And so we still have that capacity, that innovative ability that no other country can match. We just need the focus in the funding to bring those into the inventory and to get them out in the forces. So we can demonstrate that we still are undeniably the world's superpower and that all of you better behave. Also, take us back to the point made earlier about how, clever the Ukrainians have been about making use of low-tech. And yeah, I agree, we need to stay on the technological leading edge. You can do a whole other podcast about where artificial intelligence and other new technologies are going to take us on the defense and security front. But I think

we need also to remember that a lot of what can be done now is putting together technologies that already exist that are off the shelf that need to be perhaps, perhaps, upgraded or armed in a particular way to be effective on a battlefield. But that is, in the end of the day, what the Ukrainian chief of staff, General Zaluzni, was talking about when he said, look, all of these technologies exist. We just need to put them together in effective ways. And that's what Mike and I were agreeing with in our peace for foreign policy. Yeah, I mean, just give you an example, Jason.

As you mentioned, the Houthis are firing, you know, $40,000. against the $1.2 million missile. That's the type of thing that Ukrainians are very good at. And one of the things General Zillusioni, the chief of the Ukrainian armed forces in his piece that came out in the fall, mentioned, when you're talking about clearing these massive minefields that the Russians have developed,

there's an interesting weapon that drives people crazy in the blogosphere, but it's called a thermobaric bomb. In other words, it's an air explosive. So you put a bunch of fuel vapor in the air, right over the ground and you detonate it. It's more powerful than a bomb hitting the ground. And all these mines and these minefields are pressure sensitive. And it sets all the mines off.

So if you want to clear a way through a minefield, and these thermobaric bomb, they're just fuel. They're not that expensive. But you have to get the localized air superiority that we talked about to be able to deliver them. So he talks about low-cost, low-tech mine clearing in order to open avenues of approach This is the type of thing he's asking for.

Because Ukrainians have really thought about this. They really know how to do the types of things we're talking about. We just need to get them the right weapons. And he has a very good laundry list of those weapons. For example, medium range service there are missile simulators. What does that do? It makes the Russian pilots think there's a real missile threat there. And so they don't go to it.

And that's a good thing. It's a very low-cost, non-kinetic way to clear the space so that the Ukrainians can move forward. And again, it is, as Rose pointed out, quite rightly. Low-tech, it's what the Ukrainians are good at, which we should be giving them instead of focusing on, I mean, we have to focus on the high end. We have to focus on the heavy armor. For ourselves. For ourselves. But also to give the Ukrainians the means to exploit the opening, but to create these openings, to get that asymmetric overmatch in very localized places where they can exploit what they've already done, it can be low cost.

We just need to get after it and start doing it. Let me just, before we leave thermobaric weapons behind, let me just point out that the Russians at certain points in this war have been using these against civilian targets. And I absolutely want to condemn that. What Mike is talking about is using them, obviously, in non-populated areas that are minefields in order to clear the mines. I think the way the Russians have been using them in certain civilian settings

has been barbaric. Absolutely. Thank you, Rose. We've kind of walked back to this, which is perfect. I want to go back to kind of the beginning of the conversation. Let's say you're talking to an intransimate, let's say you're talking to an obstinate lawmaker or an undecided voter. What is the simple story you tell them, not about why Ukraine should win, but about how? I'd say to them, don't just look at that map that's going up of the stalemate.

but look at how clever the Ukrainians have been at using what we've given them, but also what they've got to really put the Russians on the run in particular settings. And the example I love to point to again is Crimea, where the Russians grabbed it back in 2014, said it's ours and we're going to keep it. And now they can't really exploit it because of what the Ukrainians have done. So let's give the Ukrainians credit and see what we can do to help. them bust out of the stalemate. That's how I'd put it. Now, what I would say, Matthew, is it looks like the Russians have built an impenetrable wall. How do you take down a wall? Well, one brick at a time. How many bricks do you have to take out of the wall before you can knock it over?

If you take the right bricks out, not many. If you take them all out in one place, you can collapse the wall pretty quickly. And that's what the Ukrainians have been working at. They've been working very diligently against that wall. They've been very diligently working on the other side of the wall to prevent a reinforcement of that wall. Now we just need to give them the wherewithal to punch a hole because the wall is ready to go if we do the right things. So it is possible. There is a pathway. We just have to be smart about it and exploit what the Ukrainians have already learned and what they're willing to do and what they can amaze us in doing with the things that we give them.

All right. Well, Michael Ryan and Rose Gottnuller. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you walking us through all this. Complex. But thank you for making a little less depressing than I was expecting. You're quite welcome. Thanks a lot, Jason.

Matt. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Rose. See you soon. Thanks for listening to another episode of Angry Planet.

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