Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War - Reality Setting In w/Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Ukraine Russia War - Reality Setting In w/Col Doug MacgregorSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, August 8, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. In retrospect, was it wrong for President Putin and his military commanders to employ a military policy of incrementalism in the manner in which they pursued their military goals in Ukraine? Well, that's a loaded question. You know, I think a lot of people will debate that in future years. But I think the incrementalism is very definitely caught up with the Russians. I think that Putin, who by nature is a very cautious individual,

has been extremely deliberate in pressing only as far as he thought was necessary to avoid provoking a direct confrontation with NATO and especially the United States. I think the incrementalism has reached a point now where, frankly, in his position, given the weakness of his opponent right now, really ought to end. And that's a subject for discussion that I think we should have today. Can we define incrementalism as sort of a slow, gradual buildup or amassing of troops as opposed to a massive one-time sledgehammer attack? Well, yeah, I used in the op-ed that I wrote the example of Korea in 1950, where there was a predisposition on the American side that once we fell back into this Pusan

perimeter, into these defensive positions, that instead of trying to launch a major escape out of it and direct offensive against the enemy, we would sort of make short envelopments along the coast, one after the other, to gradually enlarge the Pusan perimeter. MacArthur, of course, rejected this and argued for basically a long envelopment up to Incheon that would cut off all the North Korean forces in the South, force them to then retreat, at which point in time they could be conceivably caught, trapped, whatever, and destroyed. MacArthur never had direct permission from the Joint Chiefs, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Lawton Collins, thought it was too dangerous, but Truman thought it was worth trying,

and MacArthur obviously was right. It changed the entire character of the war. And I think at this stage of the war, I think that Putin could do something very similar. I think his forces are in excellent condition. They could actually come out of their defenses and launch an all-out assault. But I think that Putin is still concerned about what we may do in Western Ukraine,

and he doesn't want a larger war. And that's why I keep telling people, I think that Putin is still concerned about what we may do in Western Ukraine, and he doesn't want a larger war. And that's why I keep telling people, I think, despite the fact that Ukraine is at a weak point, unlike anything anybody has seen since World War II in Europe, it's the most dangerous point in the history of this crisis and conflict, because Putin, by exercising restraint, may be conveying to the West something the West wants to believe, which is that Russia is weak, that Russia can't do certain things, that their forces can't do things. Well, he's got over 300,000 combat troops sitting in reserve. If he doesn't use them soon, I think there's a higher probability that stupidity will prevail in the West than there is if he uses them to rapidly roll up the river and sit out in front of Kiev. I'm almost afraid to ask, but I have to. What would happen if stupidity prevails in the West?

Would the Poles enter with ground troops? Well, that seems to be the most likely scenario. The greatest fear that I and others have is that the Poles, Lithuanians, with potentially some Ukrainian support, would move into western Ukraine, some distance, how far, I don't know, perhaps 50 miles, and by another 200 miles create some sort of enclave in the part of Ukraine that historically had been administered by the Polish or Polish-Lithuanian state for hundreds of years. At that point, then I think the gloves really will come off, unfortunately, on the Russian side.

The Russian Duma is already talking about mobilizing another 500,000 troops. 280,000 Russians have already volunteered to fight in this war. This would probably bring the total up to beyond a million men in uniform ready to fight. I think this would lead to a direct confrontation with the West. I don't think the Russians would take kindly to this creation of an enclave in Western Ukraine. Let me get back to incrementalism for a minute. Is it largely a policy dictated by political realities at home, or is it a legitimate bona fide military policy of not to use more force than is necessary or lull the enemy into a false sense of security?

Well, look, I think all of the above, but in this particular case, I think it is a political decision in Moscow that says we want to move cautiously because we don't want a wider war. It's their perception that if they launch an all-out offensive that will crush Ukraine, that that could actually bring on Western intervention. I think privately the opposite is the case. It's the failure to launch the all-out assault and crush the Ukrainians that invites Western intervention because of this misguided perception that is still very widely held in the West, that the Russians are weak, they're incapable, and they're indecisive. I don't think any of that is true. But if you just look at the recent articles in CNN, where the usual suspects who have been predicting inevitable victory are speaking,

they paint a pretty grim picture of Ukraine. There are Democrats in from the hill in the article there are some of these retired senior officers and they're saying you know this is very difficult we can't build yet another army without a great deal of confidence that it will fight well in other words they see the handwriting on the wall Ukraine's in trouble. You know, it's one thing for the president and his administration and his director of the CIA and his national security advisor to come out with this nonsense that Putin has lost, the Russians have lost. It's another thing for a Democrat on one of these traveling trips, congressional delegations, to say things like, our briefings

have been sobering. We're reminded of the challenges they face, Representative Mike Quigley, a moderate Democrat from Illinois, or they're still going to see for the next couple of weeks if there is a chance of making some more progress. But for them really to make progress, that would change the balance of this conflict. I think it's going to be extremely unlikely. Another Western diplomat unnamed. Are those no longer beholden to the administration's absurd mantra that Russia has lost the war, beginning to see the light, the truth. I think that President Biden and perhaps his NSA are the only people that are willing to go public and make those ridiculous statements that Putin has lost the war.

That's nonsense. He absolutely hasn't. Everybody knows that. The real question at this point is, is he going to win it? Now, the reason I'm raising that is because of this incrementalism you spoke of. If you look at the Russian offensive in the northeastern portion of Ukraine, it's making progress. It's moving perhaps five, ten kilometers every day. That means three or four miles. It moves in all directions. Why so slow? Why so deliberate? Well, that's a political decision, not a military one. There is no shortage of Russian military power. They could launch an all-out assault. That's very clear. And see, this is the problem. There are two ways to look at what these men are saying in the CNN article. One is to say, look, this thing's over.

We need to stop it on humanitarian grounds. More people are being killed. We need to intervene and put a stop to it before the Russians do launch an all-out assault. That's one way to look at it. There's another way, and this is the way I worry about. Well, you see, the Ukrainians may be on their last legs, but the Russians aren't much better. They've taken heavy losses, and they're not moving because they can't. They don't know what they're doing. That leads you to the conclusion, well, then let's intervene on the ground in western Ukraine and rescue the Ukrainians from their dilemma. I don't know which one is going to win out. Obviously, I favor the first one, which is let's stop before this gets out of control. But you and I and others may hold a minority opinion in Washington, D.C.

I'm sure we do. Maybe this is a legal question you should ask me. And if you do ask me, I'm going to tell you there's no court that's ruled on it, nor could a court ever rule on it. But Article 5 of the NATO treaty obviously requires the NATO members to come to the defense of a member who has been attacked. Does it require them to come to the defense of a NATO member who has done the attacking unprovoked like the polls might do? I don't know that there's an answer to this. There may be a military consensus on it, of which you are aware, Colonel. Well, first of all, even if the individual nation is attacked, there's no automatic response. The response really is we're having a meeting of the ministers that represent all the NATO countries. We'll see what they have to say.

If we are going to strike back in support of someone, then they have to go back to their respective governments and get their governments to agree to declare war. It's not a clear, uncomplex event. Now, what you're saying is another issue. If you take the position, and remember, you know, the British, the French, we and others have all taken a position that, you know, Putin woke up one morning and said, I'm going to reconquer Eastern Europe. I'm starting with Ukraine, which of course is absurd. But this is the narrative. Then your argument is, well, he started the war already. This is already an act of aggression. All we're doing is trying to neutralize it and prevent it from reaching the borders of NATO.

There are various ways to construe this thing and present it to the American public or the European public in the hopes of getting them to support the war. But that's not working. It's not working at all, because if you look at the polling data, even in Poland, where the enthusiasm for this war was at a fever pitch just a few months ago, a majority of polls are saying, sure, we'll support Ukraine, but we and seriousness of American involvement in the war that has come about? No, absolutely not. And that's obvious from the very beginning. I think he thought that this American president would view a conflict with him, with the Russian state, as seriously as his predecessors did, in other words, Biden's predecessors did, when they confronted the Soviet Union. He was acutely sensitive to the nuclear balance, and he thought that once he made it clear that the Russians were deadly serious about their views in Ukraine being honored,

their interests being legitimated, that we would say, oh, all right, stop, let's talk, let's sort this out. And that never happened. So no, I don't think Putin really saw us behaving in the way we did at all. Flip side of that, did the West misjudge Putin's determination and Ukrainian weakness? Yes, absolutely. I think they grossly overestimated what the Ukrainians could do. And at the same time, they dismissed it. We're back to this John McCain mantra of Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons. Lots of foolish people bought that argument.

Lots of people thought that the Russian society over which Putin presides is fragmented, divided, and weak, that his support would collapse, that he was, quote unquote, just another evil dictator. In fact, his support is greater than it's ever been, and Russia is more cohesive as a people than they've ever been. So the opposite is the case. We've misjudged each other. The point is now this is a very dangerous situation. Are we going to continue down the road of misjudgments or are we going to recognize where we actually stand? And where we actually stand is Ukraine is at the end.

Ukraine is fighting for its very life at this point. It's not going to make it, frankly. The Russians hold the initiative. The Russians are the ones that can bring this to an end on the battlefield. They've chosen instead more incrementalism. I think in the hope that the Europeans will come forward and say, we've had enough. You live in Germany right now. You've definitely had enough. You're not going to find anybody in the Netherlands or Denmark or Germany or Austria or France who says, sure, I've got my backpack ready. I've got plenty of ammunition. Let's go to Russia.

That's nonsense. They're all opposed to it. Now the Poles don't want to fight over there. The Slovaks don't. The Hungarians don't. I don't know what the Lithuanians are thinking. But the bottom line is there is no chance for a groundswell of support for a NATO war led by the United States against Russia.

That's clear. So what's the danger? Well, the danger is that our elites ignore the population. They ignore the electorates. They simply say, well, we don't care. This is the right thing to do. By the way, in 1965, when Johnson finally made the decision to commit U.S. ground forces to Vietnam, McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara exchanged notes. And in the notes they wrote, they said, even if this fails our intervention in Vietnam, and it probably will, is what they wrote, this is still, quote unquote, the morally right thing to do.

Insane. That is governing this country inside the Beltway. misjudged the weakness of Ukraine and the strength of the Russians due to the political spin put on intel, intelligence chiefs telling the White House what they think the White House wants to hear rather than what is really the state of affairs on the ground and in military stockpiles, etc.? Well, we're a great power, and we have been a great power for a long time, and for a long while, we were a into unhappy countries on an occupation, and they fought a war of occupation over there, but the nation itself hasn't been at war. We're like the British Empire before World War I. When you have these conditions, you inevitably get people that reach the top on the basis of effectively political connections, good friends in the right places,

and having not really offended or ruffled anybody's feathers. In other words, there's no test for competence. That's true in the intelligence environment. If you know what the boss wants to hear and you think it doesn't matter because, after all, we're the most powerful nation in the world. What difference does it make? Then give the boss what he wants to hear. Why is Washington afraid to negotiate? It's an admission of failure. Absolute admission of failure. The whole thing is predicated on the notion that Russia is a backward country that deserves to be destroyed because it's led and dominated by an evil force called vladimir putin that's the narrative how do you stand back from it and say well you know we really weren't right about this it's not going to happen you know it's it's much

easier that's why there's another there's another road on this strange map into the future. And that road is, well, we said, we sent to the Ukrainians everything we had. We gave them every chance. They just couldn't make it work. And oh, by the way, look over here. There's a new enemy called China. And we have to prepare for that. That's far more dangerous. Don't worry about Russia anymore.

They're weak. But look at China. Why did China and Russia send a dozen warships off the coast of Alaska last weekend? I think it was a signal to us that they can do what we have been doing for years. We sail into or along the edge of other people's territorial waters. We sail through the Strait of Taiwan periodically with our own warships, and we essentially thumb our noses at the Chinese, even though in international law, the waters between Taiwan and China are recognized as Chinese territorial waters.

We sometimes violate their airspace or come close to it. We saw that with Iran, where the CENTCOM commander sent a global hawk right along the edge of the air defense identification zone. And so the Iranians eventually decided to shoot it down. And in a court of international law, they would have been justified in doing so. That was an attempt to bring on a war with Iran that obviously President Trump stopped. But the point is that this is nothing new. This is what we do because we are the bully in the schoolyard. And eventually somebody walks up to the bully in the schoolyard and punches him in the face. And then the bully stands up and he's shocked. What are you talking about? I run the schoolyard. How could you do that? That's what's happening. And remember these 11 ships, I mean,

good Lord, 11 ships do not constitute much of anything at sea, but these 11 ships were sitting out in international waters. We've actually had exercises conducted with US air and naval power and ground forces along with our allies in the Baltic, just 50 miles with U.S. air and naval power and ground forces, along with our allies in the Baltic, just 50 miles from St. Petersburg. What would we do if we conducted similar exercises just off the coast of Boston, Massachusetts? Right. We'd be wild. But instead, what do you get from this man, Dan Sullivan, I think it is, in Alaska?

We live in an era of authoritarian aggression. Isn't he crazy? Nobody's aggressed against us at all. What they're doing is signaling, you keep this up, we'll do the same thing. The Sullivan that you're quoting, I believe, is a senator from Alaska. And you're right. I heard him early Monday morning. Maybe it was late Sunday night, Alaska time,

acting as if World War III was going to start off the Aleutian Islands. I want to play- For these people, remember, the place is a platform for people to bloviate. He has no responsibilities. He hasn't committed any forces. He can say whatever he wants.

I want to play for you the latest from President Zelensky. It's in Ukrainian, but there's a computerized translation. It's not that clear, but it is clear that he's using a phrase two or three times that I've never heard him use before. Airfield. I'm going to ask you at the end of this, does he know what he's talking about or does he mean it in some way different than the English translation? Here we go. In this week alone, Russian terrorists have already used 65 different missiles and 178 attack drones against us, included 87 Shahids. We managed to shoot down a significant number of them. We will do our best to make the Ukrainian sky shield only stronger. Here, in our skies, we can prove that terror is losing. Altogether we can prove it, all partners. The responsible position of each partner in supplying air defense systems and missiles to them is very important. Complete protection

against terror is needed here. Ukraine can win this battle and our SkyShield will eventually guarantee security for the whole of Europe. We are equally eager to see F-16 jets in action in Ukrainian skies as soon as possible. spoke. He said sky shield, but you get the point. I mean, we have known for a long time from the documents allegedly revealed only by Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts National Guardsman, the accuracy and authenticity of which the federal government has never challenged, that the Pentagon has thought for some time now, going back to February of this year, that Ukraine's air shield, sky shield, air defenses, whatever you want to call it, would be completely degraded by early June.

That was three months ago, early June. The statement he made was three days ago. Well, he's talking, when he says sky shield, it's what the Russians call integrated air defenses. In other words, multiple types of air defense missiles and guns and radars overlapping around an area to prevent it from being attacked successfully and destroyed. Now, we don't have anything like integrated air defenses. We have paid insufficient attention to it, in my judgment. That's another subject for discussion. But the Russians learned from the Second World War the criticality of doing this, and they have gotten to the point now, thanks to new microcircuitry and breakthroughs in technology, to build a very formidable shield, if you will, for themselves called integrated air defenses. Now, Zelensky

went into this war without that because, of course, you know, he was dealing with NATO. We don't have that in Europe. There is no quote-unquote sky shield, which, you know, points to the ludicrous notion of going to war with the Russians. How do we protect ourselves from thousands and thousands of missiles and other penetrating technologies, unmanned man, so forth? He is telling the truth. They're in a lot of trouble. A few weeks ago, Kiev was very close to evacuation. They had been just showered with missiles and drones and so forth to the point where they could no longer protect themselves. We've rushed in, along with the British, the French, and others, an enormous number of missiles. The problem is that corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin can't produce enough fast enough to replenish the stocks in Ukraine. It's very simple. If you're

sitting on an air defense battery with an anti-missile defense system, whether it's the U.S. or U.K. or any other, you are predisposed to shoot at least two missiles at every incoming target. Well, it's not hard to run the defenses out of missiles very quickly. And that's what the Russians have done. And that's what he's talking about. And that's not going to improve. Raytheon and Lockheed and all of them, which receive hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers cannot make ammunition fast enough for us to give to Ukraine. What would happen if we needed that level of ammunition and amount of

ammunition for our own defenses, Colonel? We'd lose. And this has not been a priority for us because historically, we've relied on manned aircraft, the U.S. Air Force or the Naval Air Force to supply us with protection from enemy air forces. And at the same time, to provide close air support for our advancing ground forces. The bottom line is we're not ready for this. This is the 21st century. We'll always have some manned aircraft, but the 21st century, more than ever, is the age of missiles, precision-guided missiles, precision-guided drones, as we call them, whether they're quadcopters or they're enormous in size like B-52s. It doesn't make any difference.

That's the world we live in right now, and we're not prepared for it. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. Okay. Thank you, Judge. Wow. No matter what we talk about, that's a devastating answer you just gave. We'd lose. But your candor is so refreshing, so welcome to the audience. Thank you again. Sure. is so refreshing. So welcome to the audience. Thank you again. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. If you liked what you just saw, like and subscribe. We have another goal in our subscriptions. It's 250,000 subscriptions by Christmas time.

We grow every week. Thanks to all of you liking and subscribing. We're up to about 187, 187, 187,000 now. Quarter of a million by Christmas. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.