Judging Freedom - Zelensky Dragging Out Ukraine Russia War w/Matthew Hoh fmr State Dept

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Zelensky Dragging Out Ukraine Russia War w/Matthew Hoh fmr State DeptSee 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 Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023. Matthew Ho joins us now. Matthew, always a pleasure. Thank you for being here. How badly is Ukraine losing the war? Well, it's good to see you, Judge. Thanks for having me here. Maybe at some point we'll talk about something a little less gloom. A little less disturbing and and discouraging. They're in a they're in a very difficult place. I think they have the full support and backing right now of the U.S. and NATO. And certainly, as you've seen this past week or two, major media, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, on the television networks, this message coming out from NATO capitals that we're prepared to fight this war in the future. So I think whereas you had this anticipation or maybe even hope by some that this Ukraine offensive, when it failed,

it would force sanity and it would force the Americans and NATO to realize that this war is not militarily winnable. But what you've got with Ukraine right now is the ability to be, the house of cards that is Ukraine, you have the ability of it to be continually supported, continually provided for by the United States Treasury and by NATO NATO governments willing to do so. Some of that might fall off from the, week and a half, two weeks, has been that the United States and NATO are settling in for a long-haul fight in this and willing to fund this, willing to back it up. Ukraine obviously has issues with manpower. Russia is a much larger country, three times the population.

They prepared, Russians prepared for this war in a very remarkable way. So on tactical and operational levels, the Russians have a clear advantage. Like they can produce more artillery shells than the Ukrainians, than the NATOs and the Americans combined by a factor of three to five. Right. But just because the Russians can shoot five times as many artillery shells as Ukrainians can, which, of course, is very important on the strategic and political level. Does that allow Russia to reach its strategic and political goals? How does that get Russia? If Russia's goal is to weaken NATO and to remove an anti-Russian government in Kiev, how does that advance that? How does that reach that? But if Russia's goal is simply a limited goal of we want a buffer, we want control of eastern Ukraine, we want to incorporate those provinces, those oblasts into Russia proper,

then you can say Russia has reached a lot of objectives. How do you see this ending? I mean, at some point, the Ukrainian generals are going to say, we have to stop. We're just putting human flesh into a meat grinder. We're not accomplishing anything. We're not moving the dial. We have a finite amount of equipment left and a finite amount of humanity remaining.

You know, and you've seen these comments from the last week from American officials, a big story, the New York Times yesterday about how Ukraine is misallocating its forces and other officials saying that the Ukrainians are casualty averse, you know, which is just, you know, disgusting. But this idea that what how it could end is if Ukraine continues to put into this meat grinder its reserves, right? So if it continues to put its troops that it has held back in order to protect against a Russian counteroffensive to the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

But if the Ukrainians overextend themselves, they use up all their reserves, they use up all their troops, they run critically short on ammunition, they cannot provide any real defensive line against the Russians because they've overcommitted in this offensive, then you have the possibility of a Ukrainian collapse that would be absolutely catastrophic. And I don't even think the Russians want a Ukrainian collapse in the way that it would likely happen. If you had such a collapse, you'd have the government fall in Kiev, who, of course, would fill that back. It would be the right wing, the ultra nationalists, the neo-Nazis who would fill that. And then you'd have this massive refugee crisis. Ukraine already has 13 million internal and external refugees. But if you had a complete collapse of the Ukrainian army,

what a mess that would be. And then you'd have the Russians moving towards the center of the country. At the same time, what would the Romanians and the Poles do, right? Would the Romanians and the Poles then move into southern Ukraine and western Ukraine in order to, one, take territory because they all have historical claims on each other, but also, two, to form a buffer against what they would see as a... Right. And the last thing President Putin wants is to have to govern Ukraine. He doesn't want that. Absolutely. Absolutely. To have an occupation. I mean, there's nothing that's going to come out of an occupation other than humiliation. And guerrilla warfare. Right. Right. Yeah. I want to play for you. I know you've seen one of them. Maybe you've seen both. I don't know if you've

seen them juxtaposition. We're going to play a tape of President Biden just last month. He stumbles and bumbles a little bit as he's been doing lately. But his message is that Putin has already lost the war. And then we have last weekend, his national security advisor saying, oh, no handicapping, no predictions here. Take a listen. There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He's already lost that war. Imagine if even if anyway, he's already lost that war. Imagine if even if, anyway, he's already lost that war. I will say that over the course of the past two years, there have been a lot of analyses of how this war would unfold coming from a lot of quarters. And we've seen numerous changes in

those analyses over time as dynamic battlefield conditions change. So what we have said from multiple podiums and multiple briefings remains the same, which is we're doing everything we can to support Ukraine in its counteroffensive. We're not going to handicap the outcome. We're not going to predict what's going to happen because this war has been inherently unpredictable. What we did this week is formalize through a letter from Secretary Blinken to his counterparts in Europe that upon the completion of that training, the United States would be prepared in consultation with Congress to approve third-party transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine. There have, for reasons I don't fully

understand, been questions about whether we were actually going to do that. So to put all of those questions to rest, that in fact, the training will be followed by the transfer as we work with Congress to effectuate that and with our allies. Put aside the analysis of the F-16s for a minute, you have already told us they're not getting there for a while and they don't have pilots to man them, to fly them. What struck me was we're not going to handicap and we're not going to predict. Now, either he didn't get the message from his boss, which is just a month ago, or they are confronting a reality which they didn't want to confront a month ago. Yeah. Yeah. Let's hope it's the latter. Let's hope it's the latter and that there's some degree of humility and a diminishing of arrogance that's occurring in the White House. You know, I like to quote Yogi Berra, right? Yogi Berra said predictions are hard, especially when they're about the future.

Right. Right. I mean, like. Out there it gets laid early. Yeah, exactly. Right. You know what I mean? So like, but that degree of humility, that degree of knowing of having the wisdom to know what you don't know, including the fact that you don't have a crystal ball and the whole history of warfare will tell you that warfare is unpredictable, that there are consequences that are unknowable, unforeseeable, and oftentimes very much unintended and dangerous. You know, so maybe perhaps we are seeing a degree of humility here that is welcome. But again, juxtaposing that against the various comments we've heard over the last week or two

about this being a long war, there being talks of like, okay, after the Russians do an offensive, there'll be another Ukrainian offensive in the spring. This is what the F-16s that they're now saying tie into that. We're getting the Ukrainians ready for next year's fight by getting them the Abrams tanks, the F-16s. I'm sure at some point they'll get the longer range missiles, the attackums that people are jumping up and down about. And none of these are wonder weapons. None of these will change overall the war. The Russians will respond in kind. They will introduce their own new weapon systems. They will learn how to counter these Western weapons. And the war will just continue on. Again, it gets on, you know, I've talked about this before, the different levels of warfare, the tactical, the operational, strategic, and the political. And that's just not nerd talk. It's very important to understand how these things all interrelate,

but how there is a supremacy and how, yes, you can, as I said before, you can fire five times as many artillery shells as the enemy. How does that get you to your political objectives? Who or what is directing the Ukrainian troops? Are NATO armchair generals in Brussels telling the Ukrainian commanders how and where and when to deploy their troops? Or are Ukrainian commanders on the ground making decisions? Because they don't seem to be doing anything right. I realize they're running out of ammunition and they're running out of men, but they're sending human beings into a meat grinder. And I'm just a simple lawyer. I'm not a military guy. And they're wasting

artillery shells in a way that isn't moving the dial for them. Right. I think you have to look at this offensive over this these past two and a half months now as political theater, you know, as that its purpose was to shore up support in the West. Its purpose was to make a big scene, to make a big production and make it look like Ukraine is winning the war, as well as so many in the West, including in Washington, D.C., especially in Washington, D.C., believe their own messaging, believe their own narrative. They fall victim to that. And this gets into other issues in the sense of what information does President Biden, what information does Jake Sullivan actually get about these wars? You know, is everything that gets onto their desk from their staffs all adhering to the narrative of the war. But if you were to go back, Judge, and I need to look this up because I remember reading it,

one of the Atlantic or some periodical like that put out a, you know, maybe it was foreign policy or foreign affairs. They put out a thing of 50 experts on Ukraine, what's going to happen with the coming offensive. And of course, you know, out of 50 of them, 47 said it was going to be a smashing success. Now, all these folks are walking that back now. And of course, now the blame is going on. And what your point about who is leading the Ukrainians, it does seem that the Ukrainians have at time follow the direction of the Americans in NATO. Certainly they did that more than a year ago, 14 months ago, 15 months ago, when they walked away from a peace agreement that was in a draft stage,

ready to be settled between them and Russia that would have seen Russia remove itself from Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. Of course, I think anyone who looks back now over the last 15, 16 months and doesn't realize the tremendous horrific folly and not accepting that deal. But they walked away from it because the Americans, in particular the British, too, were leaning in their ears saying, we're going to give you everything you need to win this war. But you also see reports coming out where the Americans and particularly the British, the British seem to have a very close relationship with the Ukrainians, are saying they're not listening to us. They're doing this offensive wrong. Again, it's a story in the New York Times yesterday

about how they're misallocating troops. They're not fighting. And to the Times' credit, it did push back in the sense of that, when was the last time the Americans actually did a war like this? And then other commentators would say, when was the last time the Americans have won a war? Which would be the question I would ask.

So again, maybe some humility. 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. You mentioned political theater. Here's President Zelensky yesterday, or maybe it was Monday, but this week, outside the Copenhagen parliament. Tell me if you don't think this is political theory. When Ukraine needs weapons, you help. And I thank you and the whole of Denmark, all the weapons you are giving to protect freedom.

And for F-16s, we agreed it on. Thank you so much. Today we are confident that Russia will lose this war. Hollywood in Denmark. He didn't sound very confident that Russia would lose the war. Realistic assessment or, again, domestic political consumption, political theater? Well, I think particularly that was international consumption, right? At first, you look at it, and if you don't see the little box up there saying this is taking place in Copenhagen, you would think this would be in a Ukrainian city. But this was meant for an international audience for that support, because that's their lifeline. That's

what keeps Ukraine fighting. And they will continue to push these young men to their deaths, to their suffering, as long as they have the money to do so, which, you know, if you have the world's reserve currency like the United States does, you can support this war. The United States spent eight trillion dollars on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, we've spent one hundred and thirteen billion and now maybe another 20 billion with this new spending bill coming up. You know, I mean, so the amount of money that we can throw into all of this

is absolutely tremendous and can keep this house of cards upright. The cost, of course, is just the massive destruction of Ukraine's youth, just the horrific suffering that Ukraine's families are going through, the destruction of Ukraine's economy, the destruction of infrastructure,

the tragedy that's occurring to the environment there. I mean, all these things that even if Ukraine was to win, say there's some form of unforeseen Russian collapse, which, again, it's warfare, so something like that could happen, unlikely but possible. You know, what does Ukraine win then? You've got Eastern Ukraine that's depopulated. A quarter of your population, not a quarter, 15, 20% of your population are refugees. Infrastructure is completely ruined. You've got a land that is just completely, that is just soaking sodden with landmines,

unexploded ordinance, the toxic legacies of war, depleted uranium. It's almost hard to imagine how President Zelensky survives this. If you compare the Ukraine, let's say survives physically alive and in office, how could you compare the Ukraine as it will be when the war is over to the Ukraine as it could have been had he agreed to that peace agreement that you mentioned. We saw him in Copenhagen. Here he is either on a jet or on a helicopter coming home from Copenhagen. Now, I'm going to editorialize. To me, what he's saying is crazy. This is fanciful. He's ticking off all the countries that he believes respect Ukrainian territory and support thean summit, negotiations on the margins of the summit with Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Moldova, and the president of the European Commission.

We are coming home with new political support and new agreements. Everyone clearly confirms the territorial integrity of Ukraine. There will be jets for Ukraine. There will be additional armored vehicles. There will be additional armored vehicles. We will reinforce air defense. The overall summary of these days is that Ukraine has become stronger. The jets are not going to get there until after the war is over. They don't have the pilots demand them. The tanks they're getting are almost as old as President Zelensky is. Again, I got to argue, push back or support my argument. This is for domestic political consumption. It is not based on a realistic assessment

of the likely future course of this war. Absolutely, Judge. Yeah, I agree with that. It's meant to keep the House of Cards upright. It's meant to keep Zelensky in power. It's meant to keep the house of cards upright. It's meant to keep Zelensky in power. It's meant to keep the war going and what they are trading, what they are exchanging, what he's giving away. He's flying around making all these deals. Well, in addition to the destruction of the country, the destruction of the population, the destruction of the environment, the idea that this war will continue a year from now, this war, static front lines. But what you could happen is just that it turns into like what happened in the Iran-Iraq war, where you had those static front lines. And so it shifted into what was called the war of the cities, where each side

took turns destroying one another's cities by aircraft and missiles. You can certainly see that happening here in Ukraine, you know, and the same for Russia as well. But what's also occurring is that he is, these deals he's making, he's giving the future of Ukraine to BlackRock, to Vanguard, to Goldman Sachs, in the ownership that other nations and other institutions, particularly banks, are going to have of Ukraine. Even if we were to wave a magic wand, this thing was to end right now. Ukraine is going to be owned. It's going to be a vassal of not just NATO, but of Wall Street.

I mean, the salivation that's occurring right now over what is possible for the banks to do and then all their clients to do in Ukraine once the fighting ends. I mean, it is just the idea of that is just enrapturing to these men and women on Wall Street. And so, you know, you have all these other things, again, the population, the economy, the infrastructure, the environment. Add into that the fact that Ukraine will be a vassal, not just of NATO, dependent upon NATO, but also to of all these banks, because it will have to have that type of life support. But in exchange for everything that's being given now, right, it's like an old parable, an old morality tale. You're taking something now for short term benefit.

But what you're giving away, what you're selling, you're selling in this case, he's selling not just the soul of his nation, but also to as well. The very body of it, in a sense, it's going to be owned by others. Before we go, I want to show you a Russian television commercial. It's been going on there since April. The New York Times highlighted it this morning. The title of the New York Times highlight of it is called Manliness, Prestige, and Cash. Now you talk about President Zelensky's speech having a Hollywood look.

Tell me what you think of this. It's got subtitles, so I will read them aloud for our friends that are listening as opposed to watching the program. Is this what your strength really is? Is this the path you really want to choose? Aren't you a man? You are a man. Be a man. Sign an enlistment contract, monthly payments up to 204,000 rubles, which is 2,100 U.S. dollars.

Does Putin really need to do that? Doesn't he have a draft? Well, they have had mobilizations. There has not been a conscription in the sense that you would think of a conscription in a popular sense of it. But there have been mobilizations where people have been called up. There is a draft, but not where everybody is being brought into it, certainly not in the way that it's happening, say, in Ukraine, where they've gone through seven or eight or nine waves of mobilization, and they're having, by all accounts, some real problems in terms of bringing people into their armed forces. But certainly, that message, that video, that advertisement appeals to the people

that you want to be going into your military it was very powerful it was very powerful very slick right very well done my hat is off to the uh moscow producers and directors that look very hollywood hollywood yeah exactly this idea of taking part in history defending defending your people defending your family uh you know this is what your grandfathers did against the Nazis, your great grandfathers, I guess. Right. And so the appeal of it's very well done. And you've seen it at times where the American military has done such things. American military seems to have abandoned a lot of that. They appeal primarily to money now. So any idea that

Russia is raising some type of mercenary force by saying, we're going to pay you this much. That's exactly what the American military does. That's the essence of the American volunteer force at this point. But there is that, you know, I was in the Marine Corps and the same was in the army. The idea that you want tough young kids, tough young men who want to fight, who want to prove themselves and who want to be part of the big arm movements of history. Right. Be as important, be as as as as steadfast as their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers were. They're they're tapping into something that's very powerful. So and, you know, from what I've seen, again, it's coming from Russian sources. So you got to take with a grain of salt. It does seem like they've been very effective in terms of keeping their army supplied with recruits.

And they certainly can mobilize further. They can increase their draft, their conscription that they have. And again, they are three times the size of Ukraine. So they don't have this concern about manpower that Ukraine has. But yeah, as you said, very high production values, it looks like. I mean, certainly you watch that and it gets you kind of pumped up, right? It makes me embarrassed about what I do in the gym these days, you know, and everything else, right? Just, you know, I mean, like in a sense, and for those who couldn't see. The actors were body perfect.

Absolutely. Matt, always a pleasure. And for those who couldn't see, the actors were body perfect. Yeah. Absolutely. Matt, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. We hope you can come back again next week. All right. Thanks, Josh. Of course.

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