Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor : Do Israel + Ukraine = WWIII?

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Col. Douglas Macgregor : Do Israel + Ukraine = WWIII?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 7th, 2024. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for accommodating my crazy schedule this week. What is the state of affairs in Ukraine now with respect to the stability of the military and the stability of the government as you understand them? Well, I think the Ukrainian government has been in a state of slow but certain disintegration

for several weeks. You know, it's hard to follow the Byzantine politics in Kyiv, but it looks like Zelensky is at very high risk of being removed, and that is obviously potentially good news for everyone in Ukraine as well as in Russia because his removal might open the way to ending this terrible war. We saw rumors in the past two or three days that General Zeluzhny, the one-time commander of the Ukraine military fired by President Zelensky, has been arrested. Can you shed any light on this, or are you as much in the dark as the rest of us on whether or not this is true and where he is, and if so, if he was arrested,

by whom? Yeah, I'm afraid I'm fumbling around in the dark on that. I mean, I've heard all of these things. All of this, once again, resurrects this picture of disintegration. When the inner circle begins to point fingers and accuse their members of one or another actions that are treasonable, that's usually the beginning of the end. I guess it's also significant that the Zelensky government arrested two colonels. I don't know if they're colonels in the military or colonels in the intelligence department for plotting to kidnap and assassinate President Zelensky. Anything on that? Well, again, you know,

perhaps your intelligence experts have uh good information on these things i do not i mean all i do is read the press uh that's translated for me and i try to put pieces together but beyond simply recognizing that this war is over the notion of sending any money or equipment over there it ridiculous. You've got over 600,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, a million-plus wounded, millions more trying to get out of the country, and those that have left don't want to come back. I don't know who's going to write the epitaph for Ukraine, but it's going to be pretty grim.

So I think all we're seeing is a sort of slow but deliberate disintegration. We'll know more when MI6 and CIA essentially recommend that we abandon ship. I think that's coming. at a very sophisticated, patient war of attrition. Is that in the cards now, or do you think they'll get more aggressive, more offensive, and sort of finish the job quickly? Well, I think they've already become more offensive in their operation. There has been an advance to the west all along the front in some areas, particularly in Donetsk, or excuse me, Donbass, in the area after Avstivka fell. You had a buildup of forces because that opened the way to, you know, trails west. But I think we have to understand that they're not going to really launch in full force until they've got firm ground as i understand it the ground is not yet dry once it's dry and they have good trafficability

i think they'll close up the distance with the dieppe river and for them that means also finishing up business in kharkov they've got a hundred thousand troops concentrated further north that's the city that is historically russian they want to take it. And then I suppose they'll turn their attention to Odessa. They've got lots of bridges over the Dnieper. They can cross at any number of different points, and then they'll do it. So I think the offensive has started, but we have not seen it in its full magnitude yet. Now, what we have seen, as you know, in several nights over the last few weeks, are devastating strikes, eliminating communications, whatever is left of air defense forces,

sort of paving the way as a shaping operation for the final offensive. And I think the Russians view this as, in all probability, the final offensive to i i think the russians view this as in all probability the final offensive to end the war now the problem for the russians as you and i know judge is that we view ukraine in many ways as we once viewed vietnam as a domino in this sort of ring or or string of dominoes that if it falls then the world ends just as we insisted that if Vietnam falls, then all of Southeast Asia will fall. Well, that was all nonsense, and the same thing is true now. But that's the argument, and that's making it very difficult.

Do you think that anything the United States can send over, the minuscule portion of the $61 billion just appropriated, which reflects military equipment on its way or to be on its way, can delay the inevitable length of the war or accomplish any purpose for the ukrainians i think the easy answer to say is no but keep something in mind we have sent now a takums these are the army tactical missile system that reaches out several hundred miles and can strike targets inside russia now as it turns out the russians have learned how to shoot these down, which once again reinforces the point that the Russian military has gotten steadily better over time. So they probably are less concerned about that now than they once were.

But there are still storm shadow missiles, Taurus missiles, and other long-range strike capabilities that the British and the French and the Germans can provide. I think the Russians are concerned about that, which is why they've made such very strident statements about their readiness to respond if those weapons are used to kill Russian citizens in Russia and destroy Russian infrastructure in Russia. Over the weekend, Lord David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister and now the British Foreign Minister, made a statement which caused quite a stir and quite a reaction in Moscow. I'm going to play it for you, and then I'd like your thoughts on it. In terms of what the Ukrainians do, in our view, it is their decision

about how to use these weapons. They're defending their country. They were illegally invaded by Putin and they must take those steps. We don't discuss any caveats that we put on on those things. But let's be absolutely clear. Russia has launched an attack into Ukraine and Ukraine absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia now Russia viewed that as uh hostile and antagonistic I'm uh I'm sure is is that not a fair view of it from the Russian perspective I think the Russians are fed up with the British and the French as as well as with us. They've reached the point now where they're trying to make it clear that if we provide these weapons to the Ukrainians, and even though we know, Judge, that most of these sophisticated weapon systems are actually operated by either contractors or soldiers and officers from NATO states,

that's absolutely an open secret. But if we deliver these weapons and they are launched from Ukrainian soil on behalf of this Ukrainian regime, they will treat Great Britain and France as co-belligerents. That's the point. They've had it. This notion that somehow or another Russia is permanently in the wrong and the only thing that it can do other than commit suicide is to withdraw its forces from the sacred territory

of Ukraine, most of which right now under Russian control was never really Ukrainian to begin with, is absurd. And no one's going to pay any attention to it inside Moscow. But they've reached a point now, and I think Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, has made this point. Of course, we've read these things from Medvedev and others. There have been all sorts of interesting discussions over months about what do we do with these fools in Britain and France who continue to feed this fire with weapons that can be used as revenge weapons but are not going to change the outcome of the war. And I think the answer now is, well, we'll treat them as co-belligerents. Now, one person suggested to me earlier today that there was a discussion somewhere that they could use a tactical nuclear weapon detonated at sea to create a tsunami that would damage

French or British ports. I don't see that happening because, quite frankly, the detonation wouldn't be large enough to cause that kind of water displacement. But I think what you could see very quickly, very suddenly and dramatically are targets in Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary. Well, Hungary, obviously not because they've effectively walked away from the stupidity. Romania and probably Moldova that now has a government that's extremely dangerous.

Those are places where there are things to target and to destroy. We've already seen seven French soldiers apparently killed. I think that's the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Because remember, they've got the same clarity of view of the region as we do. And they know that without us, Ukrainians would be effectively blind. They'd be unable to target anything, let alone attack anything. So there's no mystery as to what we're doing. A couple of points that I'd like you to address. It appears that when Foreign Minister Lavrov called the British and French ambassadors into his office, he specifically said to the British ambassador he needed an immediate refutation of David Cameron's militant, provocative statements in the most decisive and unequivocal manner. I don't know that that's happened. If it has, it's not been made public. But he also made it clear

that British personnel, British equipment, and the place from which they're launched are fair targets. I don't think he said London, but the place from which they're launched are fair targets. I don't think he said London, but the place from which they're launched are fair targets for the Russian military. Were you surprised at Lavrov's certainty and clarity in his message to the British? No, not at all. We've made this war last as long as it has. It should have been over in months. It's lasted for years. And they've reached the conclusion that nothing they say is taken seriously, that effectively whatever they say is cast aside as irrelevant. You know, I am talking to someone who is an expert on the region,

pointed out to me that it looks like the British and the French are treating the Russians the way they treated Russia in 1854 during the so-called Crimean War. For the few students of history who are out there listening, we landed or the British and the French landed with Turkish support in the Crimea and fought the Russians for almost a year. Ultimately, the Russians abandoned the whole proposition. But in return, the British, the French, the Turks got out and the Russians agreed not to advance any further west along the Black Sea, at least for the time being, because the Russians had actually threatened to take Constantinople. Now, Russia then was backward. They didn't even have rail lines that reached from Moscow down to Crimea. They couldn't supply and sustain the forces down there. These days are over. Russia is a very modern scientific industrial state with probably the best ground force,

certainly rocket forces and unmanned forces of any establishment in the world. They're battle-hardened, battle-tested. The notion that we can stand up to them is absurd. We cannot. They know that. We don't want to admit it. And this is a very dangerous game we're playing because inevitably it leads to the potential for escalation because we can't do anything on the conventional level to change the strategic picture, which means the only thing that we could turn to would be a nuclear weapon. And again, Mr. Putin has made it very clear they do not want to escalate to the nuclear level,

but if we do, they will respond. And he said, in which case, we will, quote unquote, all die. And he said, of course, we will go as martyrs to heaven. I suppose that's somewhat reassuring. But the point we need to understand is that in a nuclear exchange with the Russians, we'd lose 90 million people in an hour. Now, why would we even want to contemplate something that utterly ridiculous and stupid? I think we're playing with fire. And the Russians with conventional warheads or nuclear, but they certainly will not do so with nuclear warheads as long as we stay out of that. They can reach targets literally from the Arctic Circle and northern Norway all the way down to southern Portugal. There's nothing in that area they

cannot reach and destroy. So we need to wake up. This is not something they want. This is something that we seem to be insisting upon. upon will not take anything seriously unless something like that happens here's um foreign minister lavrov immediately after the 61 billion dollar uh package uh so-called aid i say so-called as we know most of the money stays here uh to to Ukraine was signed into law by President Biden. Currently, the United States and its NATO allies persist in their fixation on dealing a decisive blow to Russia. They seem prepared to keep opposing our nation, using Ukraine as their last stand, so to speak. Simultaneously, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers,

carrying potential catastrophic outcomes. I guess he means what he says. But Colonel, in light of the summary you just gave us before we ran the Prime Minister Lavrov clip of the sophistication of the Russian military, is that not also known by NATO leaders? And if so, why does it appear, maybe I'm wrong, but it appears to me like they are escalating this crisis now in Ukraine's death throes? Wishful thinking is never a substitute for reality. And unfortunately, we're caught up in a world of wishful thinking. I also think that the ruling elites, and by that I mean that the people who currently govern in europe and in the united states are all members of the so-called globalist neocon class they are on very shaky ground they

are not going to last a financial crisis and following that a major economic downturn is frankly inevitable i think they know that and i think they know that. And I think they know that they have one shot left, or at least they may think they do, to try and rescue themselves. And that is to maintain the fiction that they are righteous and moral, that everyone else is not, and that they are doing the Lord's work in Eastern Europe. They aren't. This is a very corrupt and dangerous ruling elite that has created a corrupt and evil state in Kiev that poses a threat not just to Russia but to all of Europe. We refuse to accept that. As I say, the ruling class will not.

And until the ruling class is replaced and gone, we're going to continue to deal with this nonsense because they control finance, they control the media, they they control our economic destiny at least at the moment so the only thing that i see on the horizon right now that could derail us and keep us out of a direct confrontation with russia that could escalate to the nuclear level is a financial crisis at home and no one knows when that's coming i always always like to quote Nassim Taleb, who's the brilliant financier and analyst who coined the term Black Swan. And he was asked very recently, I think it was on MSNBC by the usual suspects who normally try to convince us that everything is great. Well, when is it coming? You say Armageddon is coming. When is it coming? And he looks at them and he says, it's over the horizon. It's over the horizon. Well, when is it coming? You say Armageddon is coming. When

is it coming? And he looks at them and he says, it's over the horizon. It's over the horizon. Well, when is it going out? He said, I don't know, but it's coming and it's just over the horizon. Well, it's over the horizon. And we're getting closer to the horizon now than ever before. I really despair that there will be any sort of sober-minded thinking, especially in Washington or London. It looks like President Macron, after his meeting with President Xi, has begun to walk back some of his ridiculous rhetoric, because the French obviously have almost nothing to send to Russia. It's a bluff, which is the worst kind of thing that you can do. And the Russians are quite ready to call the bluff.

I think it's we and the British who are the main offenders because we're ultimately connected and ruled by the same people. Do you think that President Xi's three or four days in Europe was to exploit any cracks in the EU or NATO. Surely there must be NATO countries that think the Americans and the British are out of their minds with the continued support of the war in Ukraine. Behind the scenes, there undoubtedly are.

Instead of saying cracks, I would say fissures that have opened up dramatically. NATO is not going to survive this. NATO will go under. And, you know, it's one of these things that, you know, never has NATO appeared to be so strong as when it was very, very weak. And it never appeared to be weak when it was very, very strong. NATO is very weak now. And again,

the Russians know that. They're not interested in exploiting it. Now Xi came with a different agenda. First of all, he's trying to reinforce what President Putin is saying. He's trying to reinforce the truth, saying, you know, this war is over. Stop fanning the flames of conflict. Stop pouring fuel on the fire. let's end this thing so we can get back to business and no doubt I'm sure he has told everybody that the rail lines that are being built between China and Europe will run through Ukraine not just northern Russia but right through Ukraine and will have a very beneficial economic impact not not on just Ukraine, but also Europe. You know, what they want to do is go from Rochefort on the west coast of France,

on the Atlantic, all the way to Beijing and Shanghai with high-speed rail to move goods, freight, services. That's what they want to do. And we view this as evil. Well, we should be doing the same thing in the continental United States between the Atlantic and the Pacific. We're too stupid to invest in it. What they're doing makes sense. And I'm sure that that was discussed. And the point is, we can't do business. We can't get anything done as long as this pointless war persists. Before we transition over to Israel, I thought you might enjoy a light moment with American government officials in the past two years insisting Putin has already lost. Can Ukraine win?

Yes. Putin has failed and he continues to fail. Putin has already lost. Putin has already lost the war. Putin has already lost this war. I want to say that and I want to say it loudly. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways Putin has already lost. And that is Russia has already lost this war. In short, Russia has lost.

They've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically. Are these people intellectually honest enough, courageous enough, smart enough to recognize they were wrong? Or is this elite of such a mentality that they never acknowledge they were wrong? Or is this elite of such a mentality that they never acknowledge they're wrong? They'll create another crisis to get our mind, maybe in Gaza, I don't know, to get our minds off of this Ukraine disaster. Well, other than their stated belief in unicorns, I don't know that they're ever going to admit that they were wrong. The first rule in Washington is you never admit that you were wrong. You certainly don't want to admit that you've lied through your teeth repeatedly. Remember that the Pentagon Papers were upsetting

the people, not so much because they revealed some sort of state secret that was an existential threat to the United States, but because they told the truth. And the truth was the last thing that anyone in Washington wanted to get out during the Vietnam period. Everyone was trying to figure out how do we save ourselves from having been a prominent member of the cabal that caused this pointless and stupid war. I go all the way back to the exchange of notes and letters between McGeorge Bundy and McNamara, where they talked and said repeatedly, well, if we go into Vietnam, this is 1965,

we'll probably lose, but it's the right thing to do. This is the sort of stupidity that persists now. Of course, what they're really saying at this point, don't admit that. Someone will come around and hang you. Oh, yeah, I think there are lots of people that probably should be picked up and held to account for the terrible murderous outcome of this campaign that never needed to happen.

But I wouldn't hold my breath while I waited. So, you know, Michael Howard talked about the intersection of conscience and power in politics. Well, at least as far as I can tell in the West, there's no intersection of conscience and power at all. No one seems to give a damn about the people of Ukraine. And that's what you see in Ukraine today. The Ukrainian people are destroyed. The state is withered and vanishing. Zelensky is done.

It's not a question of if, but when he's gone. And that's true for the rest of his compatriots. Colonel, transitioning just for a few more minutes to Israel. As we speak, Tuesday afternoon, May 7th, the Israeli Defense forces have begun their invasion into Arafat. Do you think that President Biden has signed off on this, or do you think that the Netanyahu government is doing this notwithstanding the public importuning by the Biden administration not to attack an inner city with a million-four people crammed into spaces built for 250,000. Well, I think in previous conversations, I and I'm sure some of your other guests have said

that he will very definitely go into Rafah. And after he has finished in Rafah and completed his task in Gaza, which is to either kill or expel most of the population and utterly destroy it, he will turn his attention to Hezbollah and the northern border. I stand by that. I think we have to understand that Mr. Netanyahu believes what he says, and you need to take him at his word. He is in a war that he considers to be an existential fight for the Jewish people in Israel. Well, it's existential in the sense that he wants to establish their dominance in the region

because he sees no alternative to that, which means that everyone that stands in his way, particularly the Arabs, have to be destroyed. It's very simple. So he's not going to back away from that. The timing of this i think is very interesting because this comes at a point in time when people thought well we're going to have some sort of negotiated settlement and again when i was asked about i said no there won't be any negotiated end to this that's unacceptable anything that remains from gaza that is not absolutely completely subjugated or destroyed by is, has no business existing as far as Mr. Netanyahu and his friends are concerned. So this was inevitable, but I think it's interesting that they waited as long as they did,

I think, to create the impression that they actually gave a damn what Mr. Putin, or excuse me, what Mr. Biden says. But the truth is, I don't think they do. As long as he has control of the United States, and he does. And that by that, I mean, the Congress and ultimately the White House for all intents and purposes, whatever Biden says doesn't matter. I mean, frankly, we found that out with Donald Trump. What he wanted didn't matter either. When he wanted to pull troops out of Iraq and Syria, people lied to him and said, oh, yes, we're pulling out of Syria. Of course, nothing happened. There's a force at work here over which Netanyahu exerts real control and influence. As long as he's

got it, he's going to exploit it. And he figures that he's got that at least until the election. And the closer we get to the election, the more power and influence he's likely to have over us, because the probability is very high that after the next election, some of that power will be gone and there'll be a readiness to turn away from the current course of action in the Middle East. I think you're 100% correct, Colonel, and I think that manifests itself in unusual ways, one of which is the ferocious crackdown on the freedom of speech on college campuses, thousand police in SWAT uniforms, NYPD, led by the mayor himself, a former NYPD captain, physically led about the absence of a crackdown on American college campuses. All of this underscores what you have talked about, what John, Professor Mearsheimer has talked about, Professor Sachs has talked about, Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson,

and the others, that Netanyahu has, the Israeli government has an iron grip on the American government, as you say, at least until election day. So much so that after the International Criminal Court sent investigators to Gaza and found young Gazans stripped naked, hands tied behind their backs, bullets in their heads in mass graves, and began to amass evidence of war crimes against Prime Minister Netanyahu. Twelve United States senators, sounding like mafia thugs, the mafia is smart enough not to put this in writing, wrote a letter to the prosecutor at the ICC saying, don't you do it. If you target them, we'll target you. You have been warned. Have you ever seen anything like that in your professional

career, Colonel? Oh, yes. I think it was 2012 or thereabouts senator tom cotton drafted a letter urging then president obama to take action against iran stipulating that it was this terrorist breeding ground and the principal problem in the whole region and we should be prepared to do whatever is necessary against Iran and said all these senators agree with me and he the next day he received one million dollars in his campaign re-election from from a pack led by Bill Crystal so money counts money. Money is infinitely more important than the lives of anyone anywhere outside of the United States. And the only lives that count in the United States are potentially those that could mass together and turn around and change governments through voting. But there hasn't been much evidence for that kind of thing happening.

There is a lot of evidence that if you say the right things and do the right things, it can be very financially rewarding. It's interesting. You mentioned Senator Cotton. He is apparently the drafter of this letter. And even though one of the signatories is the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, and some of these senators are senior to Senator Cotton, the first signature on it is his. Senator Cotton, of course, also famously said two weeks ago, it's time to bloody the noses of those who were demonstrating in favor of Palestine peacefully until Senator Cotton's people got there. If President Trump is elected, I think it would be very helpful for people to watch carefully where many of these people show up in his future administration. I think there is an expectation that there will be dramatic change if he's elected.

And when you see names like this show up as potential cabinet members, it should raise questions in people's mind about what is meant by change, if anything. Colonel, I hope I'm talking right now to the next Secretary of Defense of the United States. Not a chance, Judge. Not a chance. It would be wonderful. Your thoughts on how much longer the Ukraine war can go on? I think it'll last until the end of the summer. I think it's probably going to run out of steam by then. But again, we don't know what's going to happen just over the next two or three weeks

if the British and the French do not cease and desist, if we do not signal our private acknowledgement that this is a lost cause, which we can do through someone like Ambassador Burns very easily, and then make provisions to withdraw some of our more vulnerable assets and people from Ukraine, then I think we could see a serious crisis on the scale of the Cuban Missile Crisis erupt this summer. Wow. And the invasion of RAFA, if the IDF kills another 30,000 innocents, will any state actor intercede? Will Joe Biden change his mind? Well, I don't think there's going to be any change of heart in washington whatsoever there's no there's no evidence for that i think the the attitude is what we've described earlier i do think

that within the larger regional framework the tectonic plates are moving and we'll see more dramatic movement in the months ahead to the point where suddenly Israel confronts something far more serious than Hamas, and much more serious in the sense that it could be regional, with terrible implications for the use of weapons of mass destruction. I hope I'm wrong, but I think that's probably on the horizon somewhere. When you say the tectonic plates are moving, to what are you referring, Colonel? Talking about the major powers in the region, the Iranians, the Turks, other Muslim countries in the world, others who may not be in the immediate vicinity,

but have an interest in the outcome that may provide capabilities that are currently not available. And I don't want to go into too much detail there because then you're moving into an environment where I can't confirm it. I can only talk about it as a potential problem. So I think the Israelis, if this persists, will suddenly confront a different set of actors who are much more willing to take action against them that could be devastating. And I don't exclude Russia or China from that equation either. Colonel McGregor, thank you very much for your time and your analysis and for

accommodating my schedule. My dear friend, I'm off to Italy to lecture on natural rights at a conference at the University of Milan. I'm looking forward to it. And we jammed all of our shows early this week and happy we're able to save time. I want to know if I have a natural right to go along in one of these luxurious trips to Italy. Yes, yes. That's what I want to know about. So, you know, I mean, you must need someone

to carry your luggage, you know. I'm still pretty physically able. I could do that. I think you will be very popular with this group that I'm addressing, and I'll do my best to make sure of that. All right. Thanks. I appreciate it, Judge. Thank you, Colonel. Bye-bye. Bye. Back next Monday, which is May 13th, with a full week of all of our guests, not all in two days, but spread out over five. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.