Judging Freedom - Ukraine Offensive - ALL the HYPE - Col Daniel Davis (ret)

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. hi everyone judge andrew napolitano here for judging freedom today is monday june 5th 2023 it's 11 30 in the morning here on the east coast of the united states colonel daniel davis joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you for coming back. We're hearing all kinds of innuendo, even hints from the American Department of Defense and State Department that the so-called Ukrainian spring offensive has begun. Are you hearing this as well? You know, I'm here and have been obviously tracking this quite close on a daily basis, if not hourly sometimes. And, you know, we've been hearing this kind of claims going on for

weeks now, you know, variously, and then contradicted later by some of the either United States, British or Ukrainian side say, no, no, no, no, we're not we're not going yet. We're we're still waiting on this. You had. Oh, in April, you had the NATO secretary general say, oh, yeah, we've actually given them 98 percent of all the stuff. So they're ready to go. And then a month later, you had Zelensky saying, well, we haven't gotten a lot of stuff. So we're not ready to go. Now, Zelensky said he's ready to go. Danilov said they were ready. And then right after that, Zelensky said he wasn't. And now he's saying it again.

So who knows what's really going on? I'm not sure they do. We have a clip of President Zelensky saying he's ready. But, you know, you can give me your opinion on it. I don't know whether to believe him or not, whether this is for Western consumption, whether it's for the consumption of the Ukrainian public. He speaks in Ukrainian, so I'm going to speak over his voice. I will read the subtitles.

You, of course, can read them along with me, as can the folks watching us now. Here we go. In my opinion, as of today, we are ready to do it. We would like to have certain things, but we can't wait for months. We strongly believe we will succeed. I don't know how long it will take. Makes sense to you? I mean, the desire makes sense to me. Certainly

understand that that's the way he would like it to be. But from a military perspective, taking the emotion out of it and just looking at an assessment of the balances of forces and the balance of power and especially when you look at each side, what they bring to the table, the Russians and the Ukrainian side, I don't see any basis for optimism. At the very best, you can say that this is a high risk gamble. And of course, he's not going to be able to say that, certainly not to his own people, but I certainly hope that he recognizes that this is basically an existential risk for him, because if they do this and they run into this buzzsaw, these multi-layered Russian defenses that have been set up now for months, they could literally chew up the last

offensive strike force they have. And then they'll be vulnerable to a Russian counteroffensive in the summer and there won't be a lot left to stop it. So it could go really bad if this doesn't work out well for him. Now, Colonel, we're not talking about defending the nation's capital or even its heartland. We're talking about an offensive maneuver eastward. Would one ever engage in a procedure like that without a high degree of probability of success? I'll say one shouldn't engage in an operation like that without a high probability of success. Unfortunately, I think that there's a lot of just hoping that this works out. There's various forces at play here. Lots of reports that Ukraine is being compelled to try this by the West. A lot of internal things with Ukraine, they fear if they

just stay on the defensive, they will lose the support of their people. And obviously, they can't even have the possibility of gaining ground if they don't go on an offensive. But they're afraid that if they don't, they'll also lose the support of the West who will say, okay, we're not even going to send any more vehicles since you're not going to use them. So it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing for Zelensky. But, you know, they keep having all these, you know, very optimistic statements. And I'm just really afraid for the men who are going to be doing the fighting that it's not going to work out the way they think it's going to.

How dumb is it? Maybe I'm choosing a harsh word and please replace it as you see fit for a military decision to be made for domestic political reasons? Well, I mean, it's potentially catastrophic because if you are making, you know, cold military calculations is what's required here. And if you're making decisions on emotion and what you would like to have or giving into political or even domestic pressures and making decisions based on that, you could unwittingly make your situation far less tenable and could actually undermine your own potential to even hang on to what you have. And that's that's I think the biggest risk that they face right now is they're trying to make too many emotional based decisions and not enough on cold military calculus as you understand it russia and industrial society with its munitions factories going 24 efforts going 24-7, how can Ukraine launch a

major attack and expect to succeed? Well, you know, to underscore your point there, I mean, you really just laid it out, so I don't need to repeat that, but, you know, for any offensive to work and for this to have an operational, if not strategic, impact for Ukraine, you have to be able to sustain this over a long period of time. This is not going to, I mean, even Normandy, which we'll celebrate the anniversary of that tomorrow with D-Day. I mean, that took many months to actually press through, to get all the way through the northern part even of France. And we had to have a large sustainment operation ready to go month after month after month.

I'm not aware of any such capability provided by the allies on this side. And look, the Ukraine side has almost no industrial capacity to speak of domestically. They're entirely reliant upon the Western world. Russia, on the other hand, is facing an existential crisis. They have unleashed everything, as you pointed out there, and there's very little they're holding back for themselves because they know their life is dependent on it. The West is not so much that way. So they're not putting 24-7, 365 operations and all these plant manufacturers for weapons and ammunition, et cetera, they're increasing them, but they're kind of taking this low because their security

is not at risk. And I just don't think those things are going to balance out over time. Gary, see if you can find the interview with President, Hungarian President Orbban. I want you to listen to this, Colonel Davis, a very thoughtful analysis by a NATO member who is convinced that NATO does not believe in their heart of hearts. The leaders of NATO in their heart of hearts do not believe that Ukraine can win. It's an interesting clip. It's about a minute and a half long, the most telling part of which is about the last 30 seconds. Do we have it, Gary? Okay, go for it.

You made a great deal about 1956 and fighting for freedom. You have a neighbor who was invaded by Russia, the very country. You grew up with pictures of tanks going into Budapest. Why are you opposing the European aid? No, no, it's emotionally, it's tragic. So all of our heart is with the Ukrainians. We understand how much they suffer. But I'm speaking here as a politician who should save lives.

The most important thing for the international political communities is to save lives. Especially when you are convinced, as I do, that there is no chance to win this war. So therefore, what we should do far more energy invest into to convince everybody that the only solution is ceasefire. And then after the ceasefire, peace talks should start. And then we could back to your point, yeah? But do you really think there is no chance of Ukraine winning? Surely they stand very little chance of winning without the aid which you are currently blocking.

No, no, my position is that looking at the reality, looking at the figures, looking at the surroundings, looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it's obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield. If NATO is unwilling to send troops, it's obvious that NATO does not expect a victory

on the battlefield. Agreed? But that's almost verbatim what I just said. I mean, they're looking at it emotionally. He's looking at it realistically through the cold military calculation. And I agree with him entirely what he said. And by the way, this animates most of my engagement in this whole process is that my heart bleeds for the Ukrainian people who keep paying for this war with their lives and with their body parts on a daily basis. And it just grieves me to see them continue to be given hope that they can eventually win when they I don't see any military path for them to win only to suffer more casualties. Now, I'm going to show you the opposite of President Orban, which is Secretary of State Blinken, last week in

Helsinki. Almost sounds like a shrink analyzing the brain of Vladimir Putin. As I've made clear by virtually every measure, President Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic failure. Yet, while Putin has failed to achieve his aims, he hasn't given up on them. He's convinced that he can simply outlast Ukraine and its supporters, sending more and more Russians to their deaths, inflicting more and more suffering on Ukraine's civilians.

He thinks that even if he loses the short game, he can still win the long game. Putin is wrong about this too. The United States, together with our allies and partners, is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine's defense today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. So you have people like you and Colonel Doug McGregor and Colonel Tony Schaefer, guys who have seen and been in battle arguing the purpose of the American Department of Defense is not to fight wars, it's to avoid wars. And you have civilians like Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Blinken, as we just saw, arguing that Russia's evil, Russia made a mistake, we can defeat Russia. Where are we going? Well, Blinken is partially right there. I mean, I don't think anybody could argue, and certainly nobody in Moscow would argue that this has been a successful operation up to this point or that it's in any way worked out the way they had hoped prior to February 24th of last year. But I think Blinken is again engaging in wishful thinking to suggest that Putin will continue to fail and that his playing for the long game is a losing proposition.

I mean, I think that's what he hopes is the case. But when you look at the fundamentals, I think the opposite is the case. Even as bad as Russia has behaved, both strategically and tactically on the battlefield at certain points, they are clearly learning and they're starting to evolve into a much more capable tactical force. And they have a much larger force from which to draw and troops from which to draw where ukraine doesn't so over time it does not work in the favor of ukraine it works in the favor of russia and and i think that even if this if the ukraine does launch an offensive no matter whether it's hugely successful moderately so or a complete disaster it actually doesn't matter

the end result is still going to be they're going to be spent and Russia is not going to be spent. So over time, the bloodlines or the blood count can go up, but the force, the trends are going to continue to work against Ukraine. And I just don't think that's a good path. Does anybody in the Pentagon give the kind of advice to the White House that you just articulated? Or does the military, and I guess I'm talking about Secretary Austin and maybe General Milley, does the military tailor, spin its advice to tell the president what they think he wants to hear? You know, of course, who can ever say what's really going on behind the scenes? Because, I mean, we've had a really sad experience with our senior military political leaders saying whatever the political leaders in the White House want them to hear for decades now.

So it's hard to take much at face value. But I do say that Milley, above anyone, has actually put a lot of statements over the last six or eight months to indicate that he does believe what I'm saying here. And he tries to quickly caveat them, but I don't ever hear anything from Secretary of Defense making any kind of statements. He just always talks like everything's going good. But I do think that Milley has given him some of the similar advice behind the scenes, I bet. Colonel, the Secretary of Defense told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was confident in Ukraine's ability to prevail this spring and this summer. Now, we're at the tail end of spring. It's the first week in June and the beginning of the summer. And he said that

knowing what was in the secret documents that had been revealed allegedly just by this National Guardsman in Massachusetts, the accuracy and authenticity of which have never been challenged by the government and the essence of which is Ukraine has no air defenses and is destined to lose this fight. I really can't put any credence in what, I almost called him general. He is a retired four-star. Secretary Austin says, he says what he thinks his bosses in the White House want to hear. And Colonel, he's under oath when he says this to Congress. Yeah. And I think you can argue that someone is going to say their aspiration, what he hopes would happen, what he wishes would happen, and somehow he can convince himself that that's true. Again, I can't crawl inside his mind, and I don't know all those things.

Part of me hopes that's the case, because if he actually believes what he's saying, that they can win on the battlefield, I mean, that's a strange position for a retired four-star general to make. Even Milley has been adamant this year in saying he sees no path for military victory, at least through the end of this year. So he puts somewhat of a caveat. But there's no way that through the summer, I mean, there's no patterns, no rational calculation or a force that you can make short of the intervention of NATO troops that would change the dynamics in Ukraine's favor this summer. There's just no way. OK, so short of the intervention of NATO troops, how do you see this ending, Colonel? The White House has not built itself an off ramp for the president politically. You just heard Secretary of State Blinken last

week. I think I have fairly summarized what Secretary of State Austin said, this is now a month and a half ago, to the Senate Armed Services Committee. How does this end? Well, it's impossible to say how it it ends but I can say with some confidence how this will go through the summer and and that is the if Ukraine truly does launch a you know a massive blow somewhere there's every reason to think that they could have some local tactical success to some degree uh whether that's a lot or a little a a lot of these, they've been doing what's called preparing attacks and raids and other kinds of small scale operations to try to identify exactly where the strengths and weaknesses are of the Russian defenses. And they may have identified, probably have some weak points. And they, if they get their forces right, they can exploit some of those.

But the problem is that Russia is prepared for that. And they understand that there's going to be some penetration somewhere. And you can see in their defenses, they're prepared for mobile counterattacks into flanks. And they've got fire sacks where they're trying to draw the Ukrainians in for the purpose of destroying with preplanned artillery, etc. So whether they get some success or little, or even if they make a big breakthrough, that force is eventually going to get spent. And as I said a minute ago, Russia has more forces to shoot back. So the longer this goes into the summer, then the less capable Ukraine's going to be. I just don't see how this works out well for them. Let's say there's a ceasefire with the military forces roughly positioned as they are now. How do you see this becoming permanent? What becomes of Ukraine? Is it a member of NATO? Is it neutral? Is it neutral and disarmed? Is it neutral and

armed? How do you see this ending in a fair, rational way? Yeah, right now you have, especially on the Russian side, and even as of this morning, a lot of the Russian writers and bloggers in the open are getting a little bit impatient and aggravated at their government. They're even slightly chiding Putin, which is not normal for that regime. But they're saying, hey, stop all this talk about trying to find a negotiated settlement or whatever. These guys have gone too far. They've now with these incursions into Belgorod, with these assassinations they've done of Russian people, with the attack on the Kremlin, it's time to just say, we're going to impose militarily on them. And so do whatever it takes.

So there's a lot less appetite on the Russian side now for negotiated settlement that results in anything besides a Ukraine that is not in NATO and is not a threat to them. However, that's defined. And a lot of the Russian people are now being more supportive of larger use of force, not a less one to find a negotiated settlement. So right now, neither Zelensky nor Putin appear to have any interest in a ceasefire or any kind of negotiations on the current lines. So here's what Joe Biden's up against, aside from his own rhetoric and that of his Secretary of Defense and his Secretary of State, is the loudest voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham

of South Carolina, who said 15 months ago President Putin should be assassinated. And then he said last week to President Zelensky's face in Kiev, killing Russians, best money we ever spent. So you have the visceral hatred for Russians. You have the visceral hatred for Russians. You have the visceral hatred for President Putin. You have an American president that wants to run for re-election as a wartime president. And you have an unrealistic assessment of this by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. I almost can't say this with a straight face. How bad can this get?

Yeah, that's, man, I couldn't have painted it better than you just did there. That is exactly really the negative trends that are going around because you have so many confident statements about how this is going and how we're succeeding and we're going to be with them no matter how long it takes. And if this offensive goes the way that I fear that it may, I mean, that'll all be exposed. You can spin all day long and you can make all kinds of statements as long as the lines are static and there's no movement. But once something starts and Ukraine actually moves on the offensive, and then if they get chewed up the way that I fear that they may, again, whether successful or unsuccessful.

Now that there's no more, you can't keep spending success if the Russians start moving in the other direction. And if Russia can't, look, if Russia is not able to do that, then the spin can continue on, but the war is not going to come to an end and it'll just slowly grind on and bleed Ukraine to death. And man, again, they seem to always pay the price for how this goes. Colonel Daniel Davis, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for your time and for your very, very thoughtful analysis. We'll see you again soon. Thank you, Judge. Always my pleasure. Of course. More as we get it, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.