Judging Freedom - Charts Suggest Ukraine Won_t be Peaceful Anytime Soon - Michael O’Hanlon

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

#ukraine #putinSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 23rd, 2023. It's about five minutes after 11 on the east coast of the United States. Our guest today is Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. Michael's new book is called Military History for the Modern Strategist. He is a well-known historian and analyst of military matters, contemporary and in the past. I had the privilege of interviewing Michael many times during my 24-year career at Fox News. Michael, it's a pleasure. Welcome to Judging Freedom. Judge, thank you. My good friend and long-standing colleague, and it's great to be doing this show together now and your successful podcast. It's a real

privilege to be on. Oh, thank you. Thank you. We were both students at Princeton University. I'm half a generation. I'm 11 years ahead of Michael, but we had many of the same professors. diplomatic and military forces around the world, and with two of your Brookings colleagues wrote what I thought was a masterful analysis of the current state of affairs in the conflagration between Russia and Ukraine on the ground in Ukraine. Let me start where you did with a famous quote from another Princetonian, General David Petraeus, who said of the Iraq War, and I say to you, Michael, now of the Ukrainian war, tell me how this ends. Yeah, I don't know how it ends. And I don't think it'll end soon. Because, of course, Ukraine wants to liberate all of its territory and then see Russia in some way punished for its sins and somehow expected to remediate and repay its debts in the form of helping rebuild Ukraine and then even sending some of its leaders to war crimes tribunals. All those positions have been laid out by President Zelensky. They're all morally reasonable. Most of them are militarily and politically unattainable, however. And then on the Russian side, of course, Russia is the transgressor, the aggressor, the only party

at fault here. But Russia has made it clear that it refuses to see Ukraine move to the West. And it wants, ideally, a chunk of Ukraine. In fact, Putin considers himself to be generous in that he's now only demanding the four eastern and southern provinces plus Crimea as the territorial aggrandizement for Russia that he would settle on. Originally, it looked like he wanted the whole country, or at least the whole country from Kiev, east and south. And, you know, the part that's more historically Russian in its orientation and language and closer to Russia geographically.

And so those goals are ridiculous. And, you know, Putin already had essentially 7 percent of Ukraine before last February because he had stolen Crimea and supported separatists in the eastern region of the Donbas. And so clearly that 7% was not enough to whet his appetite, or maybe it was enough to whet his appetite, not enough to satisfy his appetite. And so we've got fundamentally different views here about what would be an acceptable outcome. So I think we're a long ways from peace. A great summary of the attitude of each side. Let me push back just a little bit on Putin started this, you know, to the small government libertarians of which you know I am one. This was started, A, by NATO moving far more eastward than Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush told Mikhail Gorbachev they ever would. and finance coup in Ukraine of 2014 of a popularly elected and Russian-aligned

government. You may argue that neither of those justifies war, but both of those were perceived, I think, rationally by Putin as aggression by the West. No? Well, you raise some very important points, although I would frame them a little differently, especially the second one. But let me go back to the original decision, first by Baker and Bush and Scowcroft, to be very careful and studious about any kind of eastward move by NATO, even German reunification, and then what may or may not have been promised back then. Let me just focus on that. I do think you're right that we made strategically unwise decisions to believe that we could push eastward with NATO and not have the Russians

react in this kind of peak. In fact, while we're speaking of Princetonians, George Kennan is with us on that one too. He lived long enough. I think he's with us from heaven now but he was with us on earth back in the key early years of the post-cold war period and he said that when bill clinton decided to push nato eastward by bringing in poland and others that was an historic mistake now i'm a little less sweeping in my condemnation than uh than kenn was. But I do think we were unwise to push NATO eastward in that way. I would have preferred to keep NATO with the same original core and then create a new security organization that could have NATO participation and a lot of the same members as NATO, but ultimately also invite Russia and Ukraine in and leave that as the vision for,

you know, as opposed to just this partnership for peace and the other kinds of diplomatic engagements we had with Moscow in those early years. I don't think they were enough. And I think you're right that even though NATO was, my view, was never militarily threatening to Russia, it was psychologically threatening. It was psychologically offensive, and not just to Putin, but to many Russians. Barely ever met a Russian who thought that, you know, NATO expansion eastward was a justifiable reaction to the Cold War. So I think we were unwise. That's different from saying that that we that we therefore gave Russia a reasonable pretext to react the way it has or to call it aggression. I understood whether unwise or or provocative, understood. You wanted to comment

on 2014. Yeah, I just think that, you know, you say American inspired and financed coup. I think that the Ukrainian people were fed up with a leader who was corrupt. And you're right that we did finance democracy promotion and strengthening as we saw it. And Putin was bound to see it differently than we saw it. But I don't think that that revolution, the Biden revolution, was really fundamentally a U.S.-led effort. I think it was fundamentally the Ukrainian people trying to get rid of a rotten leader. And go ahead. No, go ahead. Finish your thought, please, Michael. No, I think I can stop there.

I mean, there's a lot more to say, as we both know. Okay. Let's play a little clip. I know you've seen this of President Biden just two days ago in Poland saying, in effect, Ukraine can't lose Russia. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine, Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never. So what would you argue is the president's goal here? I'm not talking about domestic politics because you could talk all day about that. Is it the removal of Russian troops from eastern Ukraine and Crimea?

Because that is, as you articulated earlier, militarily impossible. Is it the removal of Vladimir Putin from office like Senator Lindsey Graham wants? Although in Senator Graham's case, it's removal of him from life. That is probably militarily impossible as well. But if I were to ask Joe Biden or if you were his spokesperson, as you understand his brain, what would he, what would you, what would the White House say is their goal? It's a great question. I don't know exactly what's on President Biden's mind, but I do know that some members of his administration are contemplating various kinds

of sort of second best outcomes here. In other words, not the complete liberation of all Ukrainian territory, but some progress towards evicting Russian forces from the 17% they still hold. By the numbers that we calculated in that op-ed you kindly mentioned earlier with Constanze Stelzenmuller and David Wessel and our colleagues at Brookings, we think that Russia now, as I say, holds about 17% of Ukraine, and it may have come

close to having a quarter of Ukraine at the very peak of its invasion effort last winter. So let's say we can get Russia down to holding only 10%. We can help the Ukrainians liberate some more chunks of territory. But then things stalemate around there. I think there are people in the administration who would say that may be good enough in the sense that it's a defeat for Russia compared to what it wanted. And it is a liberation of Russia compared to what it wanted. And it is, you know, a liberation of most of Ukrainian territory. And if we can find ways to build a stable peace at that point,

that doesn't give Putin just an opportunity to rearm and attack again, that it may be more prudent to accept that not because it's the preferred outcome or the morally perfect outcome, but because that may be the best we can do, the best Ukrainians can do, short of a five or 10 year war that just keeps on going forever and risks escalation and a broadening and widening. Does a stable peace include President Zelensky? Because if it does, they've got a lot of mind changing to do. I think it has to. Ukraine know, Ukraine is a sovereign country. I mean, I'm prepared.

And more importantly, the Biden administration is prepared to be flexible on territory. But the idea of being flexible on whether a sovereign country gets to choose its own president, that's really not negotiable. Right. Tell that to Senator Graham. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think regime change on either side can be the realistic goal of negotiations as much as I have contempt for Putin, like most Americans. I don't know how we can just sort of insist that he step down as a part of the outcome here. I mean, that's what you do with unconditional surrender. That's a World War Two kind of outcome. That's not a realistic goal against a nuclear weapons state.

We're going to run a clip now of President Putin referring to American demands as the theater of the absurd. You've probably seen this. In the beginning of February this year, there was a statement from the North Atlantic Alliance factually demanding that Russia returns to the strategic arms treaty as they call it including allowing inspections of our nuclear defense facilities I don't even know what to call it it's a theater of the absurd regarding this I have to say that Russia suspends its participation in the New START treaty. You know, he's it's interesting. He's he's offering in a small way a path back. When you say suspend the treaty, you're implying that this is temporary. And, you know, I'm not complimenting Putin for his his generosity.

I'm just saying that he is being careful here. He hasn't attacked NATO territory. He hasn't ended all diplomatic contact with the West categorically, if we're willing to talk to him or, you know, certain intermediaries are. He hasn't excluded a peace process at some point and he hasn't excluded returning to some of these kinds of agreements. So for all of his brutality, for all of his barbarism, frankly, he's also still in a calculating and semi-rational mindset. He's made big mistakes, and I don't like his ethics, and he's a monster in terms of how he's treated the Ukrainian people, but he hasn't gone crazy. He hasn't gone off the deep end. Maybe it's the Irish in you, Michael. I don't know. You used the word generosity twice to refer to somebody you think is a monster. No, I said I'm not calling him generous. I don't.

But what I am saying is he's being calculating. He's being, he recognizes that it's in Russia's interest to have some pathways back towards rejoining international society at some point. And he does envision a day when Russia tries to do that. That's what I draw out of the term suspend as opposed to cancel or annul. Got it. You compared this war with respect to its almost, I think I'll use your phrase, stalemate to the American Civil War and to World War I. Explain.

Well, the stalemate part is more of the Western Front in World War I. The casualty levels and the kind of fighting are partly like World War I and the Civil War, although those were both bloodier per capita, per person, you know, in the countries involved. What I mean primarily is the tactics of the fighting, where you are looking at a lot of sort of exposed human flesh on a battlefield where people are grinding and pounding away to extract a few meters of progress. Now, in the Civil War, you had a lot of battles that would take place in a given location, and then people would regroup and reposition. So there was more fluidity in that sense. But World War I, perhaps, is the more comprehensive, you know, comparison or analogy that really, I think, works pretty well right now, where on the Western Front, by the end of 1914,

as we all know, things had really settled down. There was a trench line dug from, you know, the English Channel all the way to the Swiss Alps. And over the next three years, it moved only very slowly and in bits and pieces, usually a few hundred yards or a couple miles over a fighting season. And that was it. So I'm not saying we're at quite that level of stalemate here, but it's starting to look similar with the long trench lines, you know, 600 miles in this case, 500 miles on the Western Front in World War I. A lot of artillery, a lot of small arms fire, a lot of soldiers ultimately getting up and walking or running across a battlefield to try to slightly improve the position of their side of battle. Your opposite number on analyzing all of this, who's a weekly guest on our show, you probably know him or know of him, Colonel Douglas McGregor,

argues that Putin has amassed between three and 500,000 trained troops, some conscripts, many veterans, some reservists amassing at the Russian border ready to begin his final assault. He's almost likened this to an infantry version of American carpet bombing of German cities during World War II. How can, if Colonel McGregor is right, I happen to think he is, but he's very credible, even though you and he disagree on a lot of issues. If Colonel McGregor is right, and if this type of massive force is about to enter Ukraine, combine that with the Secretary General of NATO saying, you're using ammunition faster than we can produce it and get it to you, referring to the Ukrainians. How can Ukraine survive this type of massive infantry led by

artillery and tanks invasion? Well, certainly Colonel McGregor's right to raise various possibilities and to detect a battle plan emerging on the Russian side. I would just simply say, and I'll stick with the World War I analogy, partly because it's on my mind because of this history book I wrote, this military history for the modern strategist. And in World War I, each winter, the war planners in Britain, France, and Germany would go back to the drawing board and they would produce, their industry would produce a lot more artillery rounds and they would try to sneak the rounds and additional people into one sector or another on the Western Front. And then they would launch some big new offensive in

the spring. And, you know, the sum, they're done. These are the kind of names associated with these attempts. And despite this massing of force, despite this preparation, despite the mobilizations, they continued on an even grander scale than we're seeing here. They all failed. Now, by 1918, the Germans were making some headway because at that point they could pull a lot of forces from the east since Russia had collapsed. And it was prior to, you know, our full, we were entering the war, as you know, in 1917, but it was- All right, I get the history, but how about the present? Well, what I'm trying to say is that a lot of extra forces, you know, on the battlefield in one sector or another don't equate with a likely war winning capability. More likely than not, the Russians will fail because they're using the same kind of tactics as in World War I. They're throwing people at a problem. I get your argument. How about General or

Secretary General Stoltenberg's complaint? I guess it's a complaint that the Ukrainians are using more ammunition than we can supply them. If you make $100 a week and you spend $125 a week, sooner or later you go bankrupt. If these people are using more ammunition than we can supply them, sooner or later they and we, meaning NATO, will be bankrupt of ammunition. Well, or they slow down the rate of fire. You know, it's like that. We sometimes worry Social Security is going to run out of money by 2030. And sometimes this is said to be, you know, it creates fear because people think, oh, Social Security payments are going to go to zero in 2030. I'm really screwed. Whereas what it really means is, no, if we don't fix the

system by then, you're only going to get 80 to 90 cents on the dollar of what you were expecting. That's still a bad outcome for a retiree, but it doesn't mean you go to zero. Same thing here. We still have lots of ammunition. We're making lots. We have two dozen modern Western industrial societies involved in this effort, and we've continued to ship them ammunition and all sorts of, you know, millions of rounds and small arms fire capability. So even if they have to cut back 10, 20 percent in their rate of usage, they don't have to go to zero. What about troops on the ground? I mean, you know that certain military equipment that we have supplied, that America and NATO, particularly America, has supplied Ukraine, requires or works best when operated by Americans.

McGregor reports that there are troops on the ground out of uniform operating this equipment. He also reports that there are troops in Poland targeting American troops in Poland, targeting Russian troops in Ukraine and Russia, and pulling the trigger, so to speak. As you know, it's not an actual trigger these days. Question, are American soldiers fighting at Russian soldiers? I think the answer is yes. And do we really want another Vietnam? I'm not so sure I'm with Colonel McGregor on that one. I think that our role is quite substantial. And what's most striking about it to me is the intelligence support we're providing the Ukrainians, where we're trying to maintain some plausible deniability on actually handing them targets. But we are involved in sort of approving their target list

and apparently sometimes even refining the coordinates. This is all based on open reporting. So we are killing Russian soldiers. In that sense, we're part of the kill chain. But I don't think Americans are pulling the trigger. And I don't think there's any effort at the government level to put on, you know, sort of surreptitiously to put plainclothes Americans into Ukraine to be sort of, you know, they're on the ground with the Ukrainians, advising them and helping them

undertake operations. I don't agree with that. Okay. The book is Military History for the Modern Strategist. There it is. My longtime friend, Michael O'Hanlon, even though we disagree, we love each other and we are happy to talk to all my wonderful viewers on this podcast. Michael, it's always a pleasure. We'll bring you back. Thank you so much for joining us. Judge, it's a treat. Thank you very much. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.