Judging Freedom - More Tanks & Ukrainians training in US - Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

#UKRAINE #BIDEN #RUSSIASee 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 with Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 17, 2023. It's about 2.45 in the afternoon. Colonel Douglas McGregor returns to the show with deep gratitude from me and I know from all of you. Colonel, thanks very much for joining us. In one of our emails over the weekend, you spoke to me about the Ukrainian loss ratio in the conflagration between Ukraine and Russia. Can you explain what is meant by that and how badly the Ukrainians are suffering compared to their Russian adversaries? Sure, absolutely. We reckon that we can confirm 122,000 Ukrainian dead through various open sources, newspapers, obituaries, people on the ground counting. However, we've also managed to discover that there are at least 35,000 missing in action,

presumed dead. So if you add those two sums together, you come up with roughly 157,000 dead. And that's about right. If you add to that another 300 plus, 300 plus thousand casualties, you have a good picture of what effectively has been the total destruction of the Ukrainian army that they began the war with, and an attempt to build back with reserves and untrained recruits. Now, on the Russian side, we can account for somewhere between 16 and 20,000 dead, and perhaps 50,000 wounded. When you run the calculus, that's about one Ukrainian killed for every one Russian killed. That's a losing proposition in a war. Excuse me, one Russian killed

for every eight Ukrainians killed. Right. That is a losing proposition. Eight times as many Ukrainian soldiers dead as Russian soldiers dead, not disputed, factually acquired from open sources. Fair to say? Yes, absolutely. Now, bear in mind, the Ukrainians have never told the truth about their deteriorating situation. So you're not going to get the Ukrainian government under any circumstances to admit to that.

On the other hand, they'll lie to you prolifically about all the Russian troops that they theoretically killed or wounded. But these figures are pretty good. They're from people on the ground, people in international organizations, people looking at the situation on the ground through satellites, a combination of all those sources, reading papers, reading reports, and so forth. And I think that's a good snapshot of where we are right now. Everyone goes back to the beginning in February of this year, when Russia went in with a very different set of assumptions

that led to, in my judgment, a mistake. They went in thinking that they were going to reach some sort of negotiated settlement. They wanted to use a small force, minimize damage. What happened is that people walked away from that experience saying, well, the Russians are obviously incompetent. They're weak. They don't know what they're doing. This is not true, but that's what we thought. And as you know, historically, Washington always emotes.

It doesn't think. And Washington was so enamored of the idea that the Russians were weak and incompetently led that they decided to pile on, and they've been piling on ever since. Ultimately, the outcome, though, for Ukraine is that Ukraine has long ago breached the limits of its capabilities. Russia is only now peaking. And the consequence is that they're scaring annihilation in the face what what will be the uh response or significance militarily if any of the introduction of a handful of german and french tanks into the ukraine military

when general jaluzny was interviewed by the economist you remember this because you commented on it yeah and he said i need 500 tanks you said what he needs and wants is another army yeah precisely and he can't get that it's one thing to get new equipment it's another to get several different types of equipment. And it's another to find people who are adequately trained and familiar with the equipment to use and employ it effectively. That's the big problem. They've released, my last look at the numbers was about 40 to 50 Bradleys were released from our preposition sets in Europe. What is a Bradley, Colonel? It's an infantry fighting vehicle. Its main armament consists of a 25-millimeter automatic cannon on top with a 7.62 machine gun coaxially mounted, plus a tow missile launcher.

And it can normally carry three-man crew, and you can push as many as six to seven, even eight people in the back if you want to. But it's really designed for six in the back and three on board as the crew. Can it be characterized as a tank? No, no, it's not. It's just an infantry fighting vehicle. It's designed to move infantry to the battlefield and give them fire support. It's a good system. It's not revolutionary, but it's a good system. It has flaws like every armored fighting vehicle system has.

But the point is, this is a brand new set of equipment for which the Ukrainians have no infrastructure logistically to support. And it's a system they don't know. And quite frankly, it's a system they don't know. And quite frankly, it's complex. It takes a long time to learn how to maintain a 20 millimeter or 25 millimeter automatic cannon with perhaps a thousand moving parts. This is not something you just hand to somebody and say, go for it. And the same thing is true with the tow missiles. So even though these are arriving now, their ability to have much

impact is limited. And hopefully if they do use these for maximum effect, they will keep them together. The worst thing you could do is parcel these things out across the front where they won't have expertise or logistical support of any kind. Do we know what type of hardware is about to be sent by Germany and France? Are they actually tanks? And is it more than just a handful or stated differently? Will it have any impact on whatever France and Germany are about to send? Will it have any impact on the battlefield? Well, the AMX-30 is a 105 millimeter rifled cannon,

similar is essentially a British cannon that was mounted on a French wheeled chassis. It's a light armored weapon that has minimal utility. It was designed for use by the French, frankly, in North Africa, something they could rapidly fly into Chad or Algeria or wherever they were required in order to suppress insurgencies or let us simply say low-tech enemies. So no, I wouldn't expect that to have much impact. But best you could do with something like that is use it in ambush inside an urban center where it has some protection. As for the German tanks, they're talking about Leopards. The Germans have provided the Gepard, which is a anti-aircraft gun, and they have had to make more ammunition for it. It's had some success.

But as far as tanks are concerned, if they send the leopard over there, it will be a landmark moment in German history, because the Germans historically have been reluctant to supply belligerents in battle with equipment for reasons that have to do with the interpretation of their constitution. I wonder why the new chancellor, other than maybe the ideological view that it's NATO's goal to get rid of Putin, is willing to make this historic leap. If you look at the other side of the world, the Japanese are almost making a similar leap with respect to doubling the size of their military budget. Another story for another time.

But what is the German chancellor's goal or game here? This can't be popular with the German people, is it? Well, remember that all the Western publics, along with our own, have been treated to this steady diet of hatred for Russia. I mean, the mainstream media depicts Russia in every conceivable way as unfavorably as it can. Same thing is true in Germany. Lies about what the Russians have or have not done on the battlefield, about their targeting, war fighting, all of that has combined to effectively build some level of support for opposing Russia. And remember, these are old stereotypes that go back to the Second War and the Cold War. So it's easy to dig those up, refresh people's memories. But I think Scholz has lost sight of the fact that he is preeminently

the Chancellor of Germany. He is not just, quote unquote, a vassal state of NATO, and that he leads a great power. I think he should seriously reconsider the wisdom of sending anything to Ukraine right now. Not only will it bring up bad memories of the Second World War to see German iron crosses painted on the sides of vehicles going into battle against contemporary Russian forces, but it just doesn't make any sense because the Ukrainians have no chance of winning. None of this stuff is of Germany have any connection with the chancellor's wish to ratchet up German involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflagration? You know, I can't comment directly on that. I doubt it. I just don't know what the background is. But the sad part is that the chancellor's office has indicated that they're looking for

another woman to be the defense minister. And this sort of thing is so discouraging when you would think, let's find someone who's competent to do the job to the best degree possible. But apparently that's not too important to the Germans. So I think they're very confused right now. Then, of course, you have the British. They want to send 12 or 14 Challenger II tanks. Remember, all of these tanks do not use the same ammunition. It's not only repair parts and engines and everything else. Supplying and sustaining this is a mess. There are probably another 100 Soviet-era tanks from other places potentially available over the next few months. But again, none of this is going to change the outcome. This is tinkering on the margins of a disaster. The Financial Times,

an international newspaper written in Europe and printed all over the United States, I'm sure you're familiar with it, makes the following argument this morning in two editorials. One says, is Putin prepared for taking back Ukraine and the 20 years of guerrilla warfare, which will be waged against his civilian and security forces that are there? And two, won't a Putin victory make Russia poorer, more isolated, and more dictatorial? You want to address either of those challenges? Sure. Can I start with the second one first? Please. Nothing that Russia has done to this point in time has harmed Russia. Russia's position in the world has grown much stronger stronger Their oil and gas exports are way up

The ruble is stronger, their economy is stronger So the notion that somehow or another Russia's decision to intervene in Ukraine to protect itself And eliminate the possibility that Ukraine could become a member of NATO Has harmed it, I think is just fundamentally false And I don't see any effort, any evidence at all that that will change in the near future. Now, the first question is important. Can you repeat that? Is President Putin prepared after his likely Russian victory to tolerate 20 years of guerrilla warfare against whoever or whatever is going to

run the government in the parts of present-day Ukraine that will be returned to Russia, whether it's Russia-friendly Ukrainian politicians or Moscow stand-ins? Well, the first point, I think, is to keep in mind that mentioning this insurgent warfare that we are theoretically prepared to support for 20 years is probably a guarantee that Russian forces will have to march all the way to the Polish border and to the Romanian border and the Moldovan border. So that there are no super patriots remaining who want to shoot at Russian security forces from the tops of office buildings? Yes. I mean, you have to put yourself in the position of the Russian state. If you knew that

if you did not do what I just described and completely take Ukraine at this point, you ran the risk of being the victim of such an insurgency and guerrilla tactics. However, on the other hand, I don't think that's something that the Russians ever wanted to do. I mean, Putin is on record several times in the last 10 years of saying that in his judgment, the people of Western Ukraine would be happier under Polish administration than Russian administration on any given day. He knows that he's not going to win friends and cultivate goodwill in Western Ukraine no matter what he does. So I think he would prefer to avoid that. His concern is exactly what you expressed. If I sign an agreement that says, consigns everything east of the Dnieper

River, east of Kiev, including potentially Odessa, I don't know, but I would suspect so, back to Russian control, will that then be the end of it? That's the question he has to ask. And if we don't sign on for this and we don't supply guarantees of security, then I guess he says I can't, and he marches all the way to the West. This is the dilemma that we have failed to understand. We have made this much worse than it could have ever been, and it continues to get worse. It's not just piling on all of this extra equipment that's not going to change the military outcome. It's sort of pouring salt in the wound. We made it clear it's not just regime change.

It's humiliate Russia, destroy it, dismember it. Insane. Under those circumstances, I'm surprised that we'll get through this without a nuclear exchange. Colonel, do you fear that the United States of America may precipitate a nuclear exchange rather than suffer the loss of this proxy war, which at the present moment seems inevitable? Well, Judge, you know that's always been my nightmare. I'm not concerned about a bolt out of the blue attack by the Russians. I've always been concerned that we would then, under the circumstances we've described, when the Ukrainian military capability simply collapses and the state is in ruins and its government is ineffective and unavailable to rule,

that we would then try to intervene some way or another. And this intervention then would precipitate a collision with the Russians that we would lose. And when I say lose, again, it's back to simple mathematics and an understanding of who holds the high ground. We're fighting on Russia's doorstep. If the Russian army sent 100,000 troops to the Mexican border, we would crush them simply because they're on our border and we could put a million men on the border and ultimately crush them. So we would lose. Then the question is, do we accept ignominious defeat and withdrawal or not? And again, this goes back to the other issue we've discussed, which is NATO. We keep hearing this, if NATO doesn't win, if we don't win, NATO's in trouble. So we essentially turn this into an existential question for us when it never was. It's existential for Russia. What happens in

Ukraine is an existential matter, but not for us. Yet we've made it that. And so there's a real probability that if the Russians move in, and I think they will sooner than later, and crush the Ukrainians, that NATO will be in trouble. The alliance is going to stand around and many members are going to say, well, why am I in this? If the United States is not going to commit itself to an all-out war, why should we be members? Do we know of any back-channel negotiations going on, or has Biden refused to sort of bigfoot Zelensky, and Zelensky is refusing to talk to the Russians? Again, I think that if President Biden and his handlers decided to end

things, they could pick up the phone and do it immediately, and Zelensky would obey. So I don't buy the notion that Zelensky is an independent actor. Look, we've spent $50 billion in cash, equipment, and support thus far. You talk about over $100 billion, but that much we have spent. We own the Ukrainian state. It's the 51st state. We pay for its government. They're not independent, so we can stop this anytime we want. The problem is there's no evidence that anybody wants to. Now, have any of the Europeans stepped forward and tried to open channels to Moscow? You know, I know that the French have made murmurings in that direction. The Germans have obviously failed miserably, and they were always the

best position to do it. But if we persist in this, and Ukraine is utterly destroyed, I suspect that the Europeans will have to take things in hand. And again, that spells, in my judgment, the end of NATO. Colonel Douglas McGregor, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, Judge. Of course. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.