School of War - Ep. 20: Bill Roggio on Ukraine

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Ep. 20: Bill Roggio on Ukraine Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, joins the show to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 01:10 - Introduction 7:32 - Assessing Russian objectives in Ukraine 13:25 - Russian shortfalls 23:12 - Limits on Russian resources 28:37 - Does the lack of preparation hurt Russian troops? 32:21 - No fly zones 38:36 - Escalation scenarios 43:00 - Prospects for insurgency  49:32 - How does this end?

We're going back to Ukraine this week, focusing on the progress of the Russian invasion there. My interview with Bill Rogio was recorded in the early afternoon of Tuesday, March 8th. Bill's got a reputation as a critic of Department of Defense reporting and analysis, especially as concerned the status of Taliban and tensions and gains in Afghanistan in recent years. And as it turns out, Bill's minority report assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was entirely correct. Here he is with his minority report on Ukraine. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who not these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Bill Rogio. It's my colleague, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. And he's the editor of Long War Journal. Bill, thanks so much for joining the show.

Aaron, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. We're obviously going to discuss the burning issue of the moment today, which is the war in Ukraine. But you've got a fascinating background. You're, I think, most associated in recent years with your commentary and tracking of the war in Afghanistan. And in 2021, folks were following the collapse of the situation there. And you saw maps, maps of the positions of Taliban forces as they advanced on Kabul over the course of the year. Those were almost certainly Bill's maps. So Bill, maybe you could tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to have a focus on these issues. Sure, Aaron. Yeah, it's quite a long story.

I've been in this game since 2003, professionally, since 2006. I mean, look, I started, I didn't take a traditional path. I didn't go to foreign policy. Wasn't my focus in school. My degree, I graduated in computer science before that. I was a physics and astronomy major. So you can ask, well, how are you talking about issues of terrorism and war and things of these nature? Well, when I served in the military in the 90s and even before then, I consider myself a self-taught historian as a kid.

I mean, I think from nine, ten years old, I just was consuming book after book on World War II and Alexander the Great. And, you know, you name the big history. I probably read it and I've probably forgotten more history than more of the books that I've read than, you know, than most of have studied on some of these issues. But so in the 90s, I recognized that al-Qaeda was a growing threat. It just stuck out to me. It wasn't just their acts of terrorism, but their ideology. and how it was, he was growing, the, how the Taliban latched on to this.

After 9-11, I had, I started up a blog after friends and family who knew, you know, some of the things, the weird things that I, I talked about and tracked. I just figured that was a good place to answer questions and delve into some issues by 2005, early 2005, the Marines out in Western Iraq in Anbar Province.

It was regimental combat team too. I was focusing a lot on what al-Qaeda was doing out there, what their structure was and what the counterinsurgency operation, what that was what that looked like. This was before General Petraeus, before the surge, the Marines and army units out in Anbar and as well as up in the Mosul area. That would be HR McMaster's group. They were fighting counterinsurgency. It just wasn't in Iraq. It wasn't being done holistically. It was being done in areas.

This was part of the early problem of Iraq. We didn't have a unified strategy. So anyway, I started to write about that. I got invited to do an embed by the Marines there. They called my website at the time, the command chronology of Western Iraq. I was working in a software company at that time as a software analyst and took a leave of absence, knowing that it would ultimately cost my job, which it did. My 2006, I started doing the work professionally.

Did multiple embeds in Iraq, one in Afghanistan as well. to try to understand what was happening on the ground, how the troops, you know, I would go out on patrols and at the squad level, as well as talk to have dinner with generals, right? That was, you know, I believe to get the top, the bottom view and try and get a picture what was going on. But so, you know, a lot of my work is, you know, I'm known a lot for Afghanistan for the map that we saw it.

If you saw a map on Afghanistan last summer, last spring, summer, fall, it was my map. That was something I worked on for years. I detected the flaw in the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. strategy and Afghan and counterinsurgency strategy. They were seating the rural areas in while handing it, handing the, seeding the rural areas to the Taliban while focusing on the, the population centers.

The Taliban said, that's great. We'll meet you at the population centers. So I started early, this one, I'm going to say 2014-15, I started tracking what the, where the Taliban was gaining control and what areas were contested and how that was growing and how that was playing into the Taliban strategy to take over. over the country. But before then, I tracked US drone campaign in Pakistan was the first person to start tracking that.

The rise of Shabab and its predecessor of the Islamic courts unit in Somalia, al-Qaeda's establishments of its branches. Long War journals banned in Pakistan going on 10 years now. That's because of our reporting on the Pakistan support for the Haqqani network and other Taliban branches, as well as its support for terrorist organizations like Lashkar-Taiba.

So I've done a quick, quite a bit of work in a lot of areas. Yeah, I'm well known for Afghanistan. But yeah, that was just sort of my more recent work. But there's certainly a long body of work. And, you know, I guess the ultimate question is, how do I start looking at Ukraine? Well, I, you know, do follow military matters as well, even though I'm not publicly writing on you, Ukraine. I am tracking that internally. I'm also looking at other conflicts as well. These are areas of interest to me. And I've taken a lot of the lessons from U.S. I've realized that counterterrorism operations are not the same as conventional operations, but I believe I have an understanding of conventional operations as well as counterinsurgency

operations and terrorist operations and how is the U.S. good at this and what's happening or our allies good at this. So yeah, I've been looking at a lot at Ukraine over the last several months, and it's certainly a interesting story. You seem to find yourself in these positions when you're you're kind of at odds with the, we'll say the orthodoxy of the given moment. Your career in this stuff seems to start that way, right? You come to, you're commenting on it, and then you come to Iraq before a kind of holistic counterinsurgency mindset really takes hold in the American command structure. And then obviously, again, in Afghanistan, you were an outspoken.

And as it turned out to be an entirely accurate critic of U.S. government DOD reports on how things were going there. And that's kind of been the flavor of your commentary on Ukraine and the last couple of weeks and i and i want to get into all that but let's maybe let's start let's take a step back and could you just give listeners kind of a sense of the military geography of ukraine you know what is what does what does the country look like from the point of view of an invader and what what are the russians actually attempting to achieve on the evidence of the actions they've taken yeah and you know to just real quick i mean i think the the story of my career and my colleague tom jocelyn as well as

were the minority report. We happen to be the minority report that hasn't gotten it wrong yet. I believe me, no one wishes I was more wrong in Afghanistan than me last summer. But the facts are the facts. You have to analyze the facts of what is happening unless you're using the facts.

What I see it happens in Washington a lot is we have a policy desire, so we shape the facts to fit that, to fit the outcome we hope to achieve. We hope that the US would be able to disengage from Afghanistan. So we pretended that the Taliban was a partner in peace and that it would cooperate in an Afghan government. And I think we're seeing a lot of that happen right now with respect to Ukraine. And I will get to your question, but what am I seeing with that?

We want the Ukrainians to win. We want the Russians to lose. And nobody wants that to happen more than me. But we certainly have to analyze what is actually happening on the ground. versus what we want to happen. We have to process all that properly. So what does Ukraine? Ukraine's a country of the size of Texas, right?

Russia essentially surrounds it on three sides. If you've, you know, even without Belarus, which is Russia's ally, a lot of a chunk of the invasion that was launched from Belarus, the arm or the advance on Kiev, the main advance took place from Belarus territory. So Ukraine is, you know, its military is just, its military is not large enough to survive a full onslaught by the Russian military, which is having logistical issues, which is having tactical difficulties. Believe it or not, the Ukrainians are experiencing the same thing. This was outlined in an article from the New York Times yesterday, even though that wasn't the intent. when you read the actual article you see the Ukrainians are having their own tactical issues

I would expect these things to happen in armies and opening days of the war the Russians in my estimation of what they're looking to do at the very least the real question for me is what is does the Russians does Putin want to take control full control of Ukraine or is he looking to partition it does he want to take control I think it's pretty clear he wants to take control of half of Ukraine at the very least, right? You can argue that's from the Dnieper River east. I'd argue there's probably some more territory a little bit west of that that the Russians would like to have. Putin has committed a significant number of troops and has sacrificed lives and treasure and equipment. I don't think he's just going to hand that back over to a

if there is a surviving Ukrainian government. So at the very least, you know the one of the things I could see happening here is partitioning the East connecting basically the eastern half of Ukraine or putting in a pro-Russian government and established lock solid pro-Russian government in the eastern half and leaving a neutered neutral demilitarized rump Ukrainian government that would not be led by Zelensky I don't think I positive Putin would not allow that and this would have the advantage of putting a buffer state between NATO and Russia, right?

That's certainly, I suspect that is the likely outcome what we're seeing here based on the military operations. The Russians certainly, I think, are they biting off more than they could chew right now? I don't think so. They could probably occupy the eastern half of Ukraine. But if they went for the whole thing, they're going to need a lot more forces that they have.

You know, look, the question of an insurgency, I think is sort of the next level of questioning. It's more focusing on what's happening now, the insurgency issue is far more complicated. But I think what I just laid out there to you is the most likely scenario that he's looking to partition in the country, an next half of it or leave a solidly pro-Russian state there and leaving a, again, a neutered, neutral demilitarized state on the western border that would serve as a buffer with NATO.

So let's come back to that in a minute in what, what, impact that structure of conventional outcome if the Russians were able to achieve it, what the impact would be on an insurgency? Because I think that's, that's, that's, that's something worth exploring. But let's talk about these logistical difficulties that, and tactical difficulties that, as you put it, both sides are experiencing. You know, I kind of like a lot of folks, I was both surprised, I think, at the failure of the Russians to achieve air superiority in the early days of the campaign. and struck by what seems to have been, you know, the very effective messaging of their shortcomings on the ground,

but at the same time had the same thought, as you suggested, which is, you know, we didn't take Iraq, or excuse me, we didn't take Baghdad in, you know, two or three days. These things can take time from the perspective of the average infantrymen. It always looks like a mess. It looks like a mess even when it's going a lot better than it is for the Russians right now. And oftentimes, as another guest on this show recently put it, you know, you do your net assessment. When you count up all the tanks and you count up all the guns, the sides with the most resources do tend to have real advantages in a conventional war.

So what are these shortcomings? What have the Russians done wrong and how does it compare with Ukrainian failures? Sure. And I want to address the issue with air superiority really quick. We assume, and I think this is a big problem I have with a lot of the analysis out there. We assume the Russians would do things the way we would. I don't know exactly what the discussions are in the Russian military high command or in the Pala Bureau or whatever it calls itself these days. I can't help but think in Soviet terms when I

think of Putin. But I'm seeing reports that the Russians are achieving air superiority, tactical air superiority, in areas where they want to. The U.S. certainly like this would be our, the way we would wage war. We would want to achieve air superiority in order to use our aircraft to support our advancing forces and we wouldn't want to lose aircraft. Are the Russians, are we so certain that this is exactly the way the Russians were a fight? So I, and again, I don't know the answers to this, but I think a lot of assumptions are being made by a lot of analysts out there. The idea that the Russians were going to win this war in two days,

that is, as you had mentioned, you know, did he take a shot to do this? Sure. And the U.S. also used shock and on in the attempt to kill Saddam Hussein in 2003 and decapitate the government. It didn't work. So when the U.S. was launching shock at all, it also massed forces on the border

and launched a full-fledged invasion. Well, guess what? The Russians went, I think of this in football terms. It would be like your team, you know, you get the ball after the kickoff and you throw a Hail Mary on the opening play. Okay, it didn't work,

but you have a rest of a game. There's a game plan for the rest of the game. And you're going to continue to play, you know, the extra, you know, 59 minutes and 40 seconds of the game. It's not over. The Russians also launched a ground invasion on some people say four fronts. I'll say five because I think that one front in between Kharkiv and Ukraine is significant.

And even though it is a supporting effort for the Kiev effort, I, anyway, my point being, these, these offensives were launched in conjunction. did the Russian attempt to take that air base fail? I think they established a foothold. It didn't work the way they wanted. We equate that with failure. I look at it and say, well, the Russians were prepared for this to not work and launched a ground operation because ultimately the Russians didn't just want Zelensky out of government.

I believe they want to seize at least half the country. And in order to do that, you need to put boots on the ground and seize territory. use your infantry, your tanks, your artillery. I think the Russians view air, you know, this air superiority. I think they view the air power more of a supporting role than a key element. Now, okay, let's talk to the question you actually asked me, which was, what are the shortcomings? Yes, the Russians are definitely have maintenance issues. We've seen numerous images of crack tires, flat tires on trucks, broken tracks, you know, all due to maintenance, right?

We've seen issues of, you know, are they able to get the supplies and get the repairs up? Are they able to get food to their troops? You know, obviously the question of air superiority, which I don't think is a big issue as Western analysts make it. I would say, you know, we're not seeing the Russians do things like jamming and things of this nature. These are all problems the Russians have experienced. And yet they're advancing on multiple fronts. I mean, Kiev is close to being surrounded. There are, you're looking at there's the province.

that's right next to Kiev, it's called Charnative. It and the rest of this problem, another province called Sumi, which has a big city there known as Sumi. They're close to being enveloped by Russian forces. In the east, the Ukrainian brigades are going to be cut off in the Donbos area. If they don't pull back soon, it looks like the Russians are going to complete that envelopment. In the south, you're seeing a lot of advances from the Russians. So whatever tactical issues they're having, logistics, tactics,

maintenance, failure to coordinate air, you know, air and ground fires and advances, they're still advancing. And this is what, you know, the Russians don't have a way of war like we do here in the West, or particularly in the United States. They're not as concerned about losing tanks and armored personnel vehicle vehicles or hundreds or thousands of troops. We don't know the answer to that question, by the way. The number from the DOD that I've seen is anywhere from 500 to 5,000. Well, why don't they just say one to 10,000 or zero to 10,000? I mean, you know, this, so that's what we're seeing on the Russian side. Some of the short, the Ukrainians weren't, you know, every, there's a lot of, you know, talk about it.

And the Ukrainians are fighting valiantly. And they're fighting longer than a lot of people expected they would. I am, I had no understanding of what the Ukrainian, how well they would fight. I just kept an open mind about that, right? they've been fighting well but they're they're fighting on their back foot at the start of the war the new york times article that i mentioned earlier details this one brigade the 59th brigade that was near the station near Crimea they weren't they did not they weren't mobilized for the for the attack so they weren't prepared when they did go to mobilize only half of the

soldiers showed up initially the air defense units units and aircraft used that would use to support their operations were moved to Kiev to in order to stave off of fighting there. They've probably retreated over 100 miles, if not more, since this fight began. The commander of the unit talks about losing nearly all of his armored and armor, armored personnel carriers and artillery. They've basically become a light, you know, went from a mobile, mobilized brigade. or probably think of it like a mechanized brigade to a light infantry brigade whose main weapon is anti-tank missiles that's that's not good news is this happening across multiple other

with other units we're not getting any reporting from the ukrainian side of this all of the reporting is the russian failures the russian problems the russian tactical problems and all of the you know the column that's the russian i know i'm switching back to the russian side how do we know what the Russians intent with that column that is sitting there north of northeast of I'm sorry northwest of Kiev we we don't really know what is the Russians plan with that so we say things like they're stalled but the right okay it's stalled but the Russians are still advancing so these are and that has to be because the Ukrainians are having problems on their end as well the one of the things that New York Times article also talked about they lost command and control that commander of that

unit had to make decisions for himself without communicating to the higher level of command. You know, I expect these things in the chaotic opening of war. The question is how do you respond? How, you know, what happens next? And what I'm seeing the Russians doing right now is reorganizing and continuing their push. I'm guessing that if the smart Russian generals expected a lot of this. And, you know, I'm sure there was dumb Russian generals who were overly optimistic about their, about their prospects. So, yeah, in a nutshell, that's how, you know, both sides are having problems. I see one side continue to advance despite its problems. You see these reports of, you know, at least a handful of dead Russian generals, which, you know, on the one hand is to be,

is to be cheered. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure it's evidence of, it's not necessarily good news when you think about it. What it seems to be to suggest is, you know, is a word coming from on top, that if you're not moving, you better be out there and getting it moving. So in a way, it's kind of a data point that suggests some seriousness. Oh, if I may on that point. Yeah, of course. Please, please. I could not agree with you more.

A lot of Iranian senior IRGC or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals died while supporting militias and Iranian units fight against the Islamic State. and yet who won the Iranians did because they put their commanders at the tip of the spear to push their units forward and you know as you well know and I know that's the point you're making if you're committed you put your leader you know you take risks and that's what we're seeing them do yep so there was a lot in what you just surveyed it's a couple questions that inspires for me you make this point about resources and when the Russians just having a different view of their resources. And it's obviously the case that if you compare Russian resources to Ukrainian resources,

the Russians just have less of an immediate concern of the Ukrainians obviously have, you know, a crisis level of concern from date one in terms of the rate at which they can afford to go through people and stuff. You know, on the other hand, you know, it's not Stalin's Soviet Union. They've, their demographics relative to other countries are not where they were in the 1940s. They do not have one lease. I don't know how many tanks and armored vehicles. Russia produces a day. I suspect it's not as many as they're losing right now in Ukraine. So I guess I'll ask it this way. If the Russians aren't concerned about that sort of stuff, you know, should they be? You know, at some point, do they run into a material problem here?

It's possible. I think it's something they should be concerned about. I suspect they made the calculation that they're going to take a certain level of losses. Look, and with, you know, the one thing that sanctions and shutting off the banks, it's going to be harder for the Russians to replace these losses. That is certain. But there's a lot of unknowns how long were these sanctions last? How long can the Europeans survive without buying Russian oil and Russian gas? And does that require for them to, you know, one of the things I noted with the sanctions, I didn't realize it went a step higher here. But the U.S. or I think that the Swift system kicked off one of the two, the second of the three biggest Russian banks.

And that was a big red flag for me. I'm going, why is that? And now I'm seeing that Western states are still buying Russian oil. And I'm guessing in order to make those transactions because you need banking transactions, you can't shut off all the Russian banks. So that money's coming through.

But to your point, yes, the Russians have to be concerned about this. They certainly have vast resources, at least of armored vehicles. of and tanks and aircraft to push through these losses at the front, you know, to replace the losses at the front and continue to push through. I mean, the question too is, do we expect the Russians to continue to take losses like they have in the first two weeks of this campaign? If the Russians are able to make Kiev fall in the next, let's say, month, I think it could be weeks. You know, once Kiev is surrounded, all bets are all.

off as to what happens here. And once some Ukrainian troops are encircled, if they are, if the Ukrainians don't pull them back, you know, the level of fighting as the Russians gain more ground and is able to at least keep an insurgency level of violence or partisan level, however you want to put that, you know, their losses may decrease of be decreasing over time as well. But these are questions. I think these are the time we'll tell questions. I don't have an answer. I do think the Russians need to be concerned about taking too many losses about not stringing this fight out over the course. If this fight is within, you know, in the time frame of months,

I don't think it's going to be a problem. If it's going to take a year for the Russians to quell eastern Ukraine and take Kiev and cause the fall of the Ukrainian government, then I think we're talking, then we could start saying, yeah, I think the Russians have some very real problems, very real concerns about, trying to replace the equipment lost here. Interesting.

So one of the themes that you hammered on in your coverage of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and again, it was a theme that was, you know, unfortunately for the world, but good for your credibility proved to be entirely true, was the ideological motivation of the Taliban. They're, the sort of substantive reason for their cooperation with al-Qaeda and, you know, networks associated with al-Qaeda, you know, we should look to that as a guide to what their actions are likely to be and not to what their, you know, representatives are telling our senior representatives and negotiations. I always thought you were on the money with that. It's because

I had, I had personal experience of it. I remember sitting in the spring of 2010 having, having tea with a Taliban commander, who was a funny kind of war, who admitted to me that he was a Taliban commander, which you will, that will seem less strange to you than probably well, some listeners as well. This stuff, the stuff did happen and telling me, you know, we were just talking about Marja and Helmand province in the area. He owned a lot of land around there, or at least controlled a lot of land, probably more accurate to say. And I, you know, I had my sort of stale standard talking points that, you know, bringing economic development, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know all about it. And I had found that these, you know, made progress with other Afghans. And I, he had his kid there,

He's like his 10-year-old son in the garden with us. And I gestured towards his son. And I said, you know, like, you're an educated man, but she was. He was a college or graduated. He got to college in Pakistan. His father had served in the Afghan parliament until the parliament had ceased to exist. And he said, you know, 10 years from now, don't you want your son to be at university, you know, choosing a profession like the law or medicine, leading a, you know, a prosperous life.

And he looked at me with these sort of cold, gray eyes and said, well, in 10 years, my son will have died fighting in the jihad. And, you know, there's just no, there's no easy off-the-cuff response to that, especially if you're not anticipating it. So I thought you were always right about that. And this, I'm going to bring this round to a landing with Ukraine, which is one of the criticisms that the Russians have faced is a failure to politically prepare their troops. And maybe to an extent their population, but certainly their soldiers for this operation. This is something I got into with Fred Kagan in our last episode, there does seem to be something to this. And, you know, I'm curious to know your view. And I'm curious to know, you know, A, I guess if you, based on what

you're seeing, do you agree with that that Russian troops seem to be even less motivated, let's say, than the average infantrymen going into one of these sorts of things because they're not properly prepared? So question A, is that, is that basically accurate based on what you're seeing? And question B is how much does it matter? Because some people think it matters a lot. I'm curious to know what you said yeah it's these are good questions Aaron and yeah no your experience of Marja that's unsurprising to me by the way whatsoever I've heard this from numerous individuals I've actually experienced this early on in 2006 was when I was embedded with Canadian army and in Kandahar province but so back to the the point of true morale true preparation things of that

nature Russian I have no doubt that Putin and the leadership there pulled one over on just about everyone. What I do have a question is, I know we're seeing a lot of propaganda come out from the Ukrainian side. A lot of the information we're seeing is stuff that is fed to us by the Ukrainian government,

by the Ukrainian military. That doesn't, just because it's propaganda, doesn't mean it's bad. Let me be perfectly clear about that. But it is, this is a view that they want us to see. Is it indicative of all of the troops that are invading Ukraine?

Is it indicative of all of the Russian population? I've seen a mixed bag, at least on the civilian side, right? I'm seeing, geez, I even saw a pro Russian protest in Australia. So it's, this is a really difficult question to answer. I think of the more, to me, the one, the one, that's easier to answer is does it matter? And ultimately, unless I see Russian troops pull off the line and the Russian advance inside of Ukraine halt or if the Russians are defeated, I don't think it's really at the end of the day going to matter. But I do believe that Putin has been

underhanded with his dishonest to his troops and to his people. He's shutting off basically communication with the West with Facebook and Twitter and shutting out newspapers and bar making it illegal to report independently of news organizations pulling out. So there certainly has fears about the wrong message getting across. But like ultimately

I'm not sure that this really matters if the Russian military in the next several months is able to achieve the objective that I think that it has or the objective that I believe that it is seeking to accomplish again cutting up cutting ukraine in half at the very least or taking it over in full if that happens then none of this will really matter he'll be ultimately be seen as you know a victor in a war and

you know his control over the information inside of the country ultimately that will penetrate yeah so let's talk about american and western responses um to what's been going on and there there does seem to be a kind of general consensus setting in amongst people who often disagree that we should be supportive of the Ukrainian cause and that support could take the form of the sanctions that we're targeting Russia with to take the form of supplying arms to them. There are those who go further and you drew my attention just before we started recording to a letter that, an open letter that hit the press just an hour or hour or two ago with some pretty serious names attached to it calling for the imposition of a no-form.

fly zone over, I don't know if the letter is calling for all of Ukraine or part of Ukraine, but either way, calling for a no-fly zone, what's your view of that recommendation? Yeah. So this letter calls for what they call a limited no-fly zone. And it's really to support the humanitarian evacuation. But what is a limited no-fly zone? You see some serious people, former ambassadors, heads of foundations and think tanks that are foreign. and policy-focused, and even two generals, one of them, a former Supreme Allied commander for Europe, another, the commander of U.S. Army Europe, you know, I'm going to take a minute to explain what imposing a no-fly zone means. That doesn't just mean that

we tell the Russians they're not allowed to fly aircraft. You have to be willing to do two things. You have to be willing to shoot down Russian airplanes. And in order to do that, you need to put aircraft in the air in a combat zone. And in order for you to not have your planes, the risk your planes shot down, and we all know that Americans do not want their pilots shot down over enemy territory and left, right, you need to target Russian air defense. And that includes surface to air missiles, anti-aircraft guns that may be moving along with Russian troops, radar sites,

things, you know, command and control centers for coordinating air defense units. And all of these units are not going to be, Aaron, they're not all going to be inside Ukraine. The Russian SA 400, you know, the range of this missile system extends for hundreds of miles. You know, at the opening days of the war, a Russian aircraft, I'm sorry, Ukrainian aircraft was shot down from an S-400 that wasn't even based. inside of Ukraine. It was across the border in Russia. This means we would not only have to be conducting air strikes, you know, first of all, risking air-to-air confrontations with Russian

aircraft. We would have to be willing to launch airstrikes against Russian air defense units that are not just inside Ukraine, but across the border. This is something that General retired general Breedlove and retired Lieutenant General Hodges should know about and yet they sign off on something like this. This is highly disturbing to me. The implications, it may feel good to say we need to enforce a no-fly zone for humanitarian reasons. You know, that's great. That feels great but the devil's in the details when it comes to something like a no-fly zone you risk going you know with direct you know military confrontation with russia sending weapons to group you know to a country that is in conflict with russia is not the same thing and it's not perceived to be the same

thing as direct conflict military confrontation between the united states and russia look there's during the Cold War, we fought numerous engagements like this, Nicaragua and El Salvador and throughout Africa. I mean, it could go on and on where Vietnam and where these conflicts, you know, but it was always done through an intermediary. There was never real direct confrontation as being, as is being proposed here. I, you know, I'm highly disturbed that individuals that are,

on that are named that signed off on this have have actually put their name to something like this this this is absolute madness if you want to set the nuclear the the doomsday clock to 1159 p.m. This is how you do it. This is how you you know get involved just because it feels good to show our support for Ukraine these we need to make hard decisions about what level of involvement we want to have in this conflict. Is it worth for a direct use? U.S. and Russia confrontation in order to support the Ukrainians. I think the Biden administration has been pretty clear that it's not. And fortunately, the same adults in the room, so to speak, seem to be shooting this down. But I look at that list of individuals and I, and I just wondering,

do they really understand what they're proposing here? Yeah. You know, it struck me just the other day that if you had asked me in March of 2021, you know, what are the odds of the nuclear weapons release on the European subcontinent? In the coming year, I would say, well, you know, effectively, effectively zero, negligible to zero. And if you ask you that question today, you know, the answer is, I'm not sure. I don't know if it's a, you know, 1% or 5% or 20% chance, but it's not zero. It's not, that's exactly, as you were saying this, the answer is not zero anymore. that's and increasing in, you know, a direct confrontation inches that number up to where you start to squirm in your seat a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you also contemplate,

you know, aside from, you know, escalatory actions like the ones being called for in that letter, I mean, there are all sorts of escalatory actions available to the Russians, whether in response to an escalation from us or I think more likely, whether out of a kind of desperation if they do find themselves in a difficult situation. Let's say, you, I think, very thoughtfully kind of made the case that, you know, time is kind of the enemy of the Ukrainian cause and the friend, excuse me, time is the enemy of the Russian cause in the sense that if the sanctions stay strong, if the squeeze on their finances stays tight, they may well run into resource problems, the longer it takes them to prosecute this

conventional campaign. So you could see a scenario. Let's say Kiev doesn't fall in the next month. Let's say it's two or three months from now. I know you're skeptical of that, but you know, neither of us know. Actually, I'm, I'm, if you told me it would take two, three, four months to take Kiev, this all depends on the Ukrainians and how will, how willing they are to bear the brunt of Soviet or Russian. I keep going to Soviet.

Sure. I am a child of the 80s and the Cold War. And I apologize for that. It's essentially the same difference, the same mentality. You know, are they willing to, you know, these are the question, we can't answer these questions until they happen. So I wouldn't be shocked if it took months. But I think the Russians have months and months and months.

I don't think they have years. That's where I stand on that. Understood. And the point I was making is you could see as if they do find themselves in kind of the worst case scenario from their perspective. on these timeline questions, you could see them escalating. It's hard to predict in what manner for what specific reason, but escalating in some manner that is designed not only to accomplish objectives on the ground,

but also to deter what they may perceive as NATO interest in intervening or perhaps even bargaining with their willingness to escalate on the one hand and offering, making demands for sanctions relief on the other. These are all scenarios that are quite easy to contemplate. It sounds insane to demand sanctions. relief in return for not setting off nuclear weapons. But, you know, it strikes me that for Putin this could very, in certain ways it already is. And in other ways, it could become an even more acute simple question of survival for him. And, you know, Aaron, one thought, you know, came in my head

here, you know, if the, if the U.S. decides to escalate this and intervene and strongly considers a no-fly zone or things of this nature, it could actually cause the Russians to escalate their brutality against the Ukrainian people. We can afford a lengthy, we can't afford what's going to come down the pike here. So you know what? We're going to batter a city with our, you know, look, there's a lot of talk about how the Russians are indiscriminately targeting civilians. The Russians have killed a lot of civilians. The numbers in the hundreds, it may even be a thousand. If the Russians wanted to kill indiscriminately kill civilians, you and I know they can do this quite easily. I think a lot of what we're seeing is either errand strikes or strikes that are

targeted. I saw one that hit a barracks and also hit a military barracks, which is a legitimate target in a city, but also hit a neighboring apartment building. I'm not making excuses for this. What I'm trying to say is the Russians have yet to pull that escalation card in the sense of indiscriminately targeting civilians in order to get the Ukrainians to abandon their resistance. that can happen if you want to do something like a no-fly zone or start ratcheting up the pressure on the Russians if they feel that that time is against them that they need to try and to take a shortcut you know that can this is all the you know the realm of war gaming something I've never actually gotten into except into my head like one of the reasons we I was successful

Tom and I were successful with the Taliban and in other areas is because one of the things we do it's either consciously or unconsciously is we red team, which means we, we, you know, tried to take the view of the enemy. How would they act? How do they think? What are their, you know, what are their objectives? What are their core values? Things of that nature. I think Putin's all in on this one. He has to win this war or he is finished. He can't retreat from this. So he's going to go for it. And he, I think that, you know, again, escalating. He's not against ratcheting up a pressure against the civilians, but I don't think that's something he has done just yet. We would see if we,

if he was indiscriminately targeting civilians, we would see scores, if not hundreds of casualties a day, a day from multiple cities, right? So you'd be talking hundreds or thousands of civilian casualties a day. We're not there yet. I don't put it past him. It's certainly possible. And I think it's even, it's likely. But does he want a Ukraine intact? Does he want, you know, what is he looking at here. When I look at his military operations, when I see what, you know, he how he wants the Ukraine in his sphere. I think he's looking to take half that country intact at the very least. So on the assumption that he succeeds in consolidating control of, you know, some are all the country, do you think an insurgency is likely?

That's a, it's a great question. That's the, I've been spending so much time analyzing what is happening right now that, you know, but this is turn. it over in my head. I think it's possible. It all depends on how the Russians decide to rule what is in their area. It also depends on how willing the Ukrainian people are to suffer Russian brutality. The Russians do have a track record of success in suppressing insurgencies. You go back to the caucuses in the 1990s and then again, that that would be with the nationalist caucus insurgencies in the 90s. And then again, in the 2000s, 2010, with the Islamist insurgency,

the Russians leveled Grozny in the 90s in order to suppress that insurgency. And then what came from that was an Islamist insurgency. So but the domestic insurgency self was essentially defeated. When I say domestic, I'm thinking more of the, you know, not Islamist or the, sure, nationalized resistance. to the Russians. And then look at what they did in Syria. So they're quite capable. The Ukrainians, we have to see if they're willing to suffer the deprivations that very likely will come down the pike if they're willing to put up a level of resistance that is required to make the Russians

pay such a high price that they'd leave. I don't know. What I see now is I see a strong fighting spirit. it's one thing to fight for your territory against the invader as they're invading and it's another thing to be willing to sacrifice your home, your family, your local hospital, the local power plant and things like that when the major fighting's all over. And those are the hard decisions that an insurgent has to make. I don't know enough. We just don't, you know, if this was Afghanistan, right? Like I think it was easy to predict that the Taliban were going to put up an extended fight against the U.S. based on what they did in the 1980s against the Russians. But like we don't have anything to base this off of except for Ukrainian partisan activity in World War II.

That's 70, 80 years ago now. That's so again, really difficult to predict that, Aaron. I think we may see limited resistance and if it's successful, if it really hurts, the Russians. I suspect the Russians will escalate the reprisals against the civilian population. And then the real questions is, will the Ukrainians want to take it to the next level? And so just to go back to a point you made earlier in our conversation about, you know, what does the structure of Ukraine look like when Russian operations are complete? And as I understand, the points you made, you think Putin likely wants, you know, at least the eastern half,

if not slightly more of the country, under some method of control that it, is relatively direct, whether that is ultimately in the future some form of annexation or something that is de facto annexation. So that's, you know, area of landmass A and landmass B to the west, something else. But that's something else, just to be clear, it will need to be something that is at the very least deferential to Russian strategic goals. It will need to be, you know, with apologies to the Finns who seem to have turned over a new leaf on this front, Finlandized, because if it's not, then it's a ready-made sanctuary for an insurgency. And you know, as well as I do know, your publication is banned in Pakistan for this reason.

You need a sanctuary for a successful insurgency. So Putin is not going to permit that to simply, you know, exist in LeViv. I could not agree more. It's well said, Aaron. Yeah, he, you know, he whatever, if that is his ultimate goal, if it isn't to, look, he was willing to annex Crimea, right? which is just stunning in this day and age, right, that this happened and there was very little repercussion for this. I think he believes that he could annex Eastern Ukraine. If not, it would be a government that would be completely acceptable to him, run by cronies. And then, as you said,

whatever is, whatever rump Ukrainian state would exist that was not overtly controlled by the Russians would be either a vassal state or, you know, a neutered state. That makes sense leaving a... This is why Zelensky can't stay in power, right? Like, this is why that would be part of the terms. If I was the Russians, this, you know, these are the terms I'd be seeking. They control eastern Ukraine from this line, you know, whatever that line would look like. I suspect it's from Odessa in the south to...

some area just a bit width of Kiev. That's pretty much a good straight line for eastern Ukraine. And that gives Russians full control of the Black Sea ports as well as the Stee of Azav. And he would, you know, Zelensky would have to go. Whatever state exists on the other side would be demilitarized, would not be allowed to join NATO, and would have to have some type of an acceptable leader who is not an ally of NATO as well. because he would not want the possibility of NATO arms flowing through to support that insurgency. So, you know, I think for a variety of reasons, an outcome that is acceptable for Putin and Ukraine

spells all sorts of bad news for the future in other respects, not least because Putin may make attempts elsewhere, but also, of course, to make the obvious point that you're well aware of, the Chinese are watching this closely and have their own thoughts about the Pacific. So, you know, well, I share your skepticism of more than skeptical. I'm sure your alarm at the notion of a no-fly zone. I do think, you know, we're going to keep doing a great deal to support the Ukrainians. And if there were an insurgency, I suspect we would support that insurgency in some form or another. You know, so there are two votes here. Three, if you count the Ukrainians themselves. There are two coalitions, as it were, varying levels

of participation by each member struggling for a result here. What do you think happens? How does this end? Yeah. So if Putin is able to achieve what we had just previously discussed, right, get the partition and a vassal state or whatever that would look like. I think the prospects for an insurgency dim greatly in those circumstances. And then we're back to a essentially, you know, Cold War II here.

I think this is the likely outcome. You know, the real question I have is, are the Western states, can they survive without Russian gas, without Russian oil, without conducting business? You know, all of this, everything that we're seeing now on sanctions and business withdrawing and whatnot, you know, that's the now. But what does that look like? Assuming the Russians win, whatever date that is, what this, how are those countries

and companies, how do they act six months after that, a year after that, you know, does do we just go back to a status quo or do we go back to again to a Cold War two state? I think it's some kind of strange hybrid in between. I just keep looking back to Iran and Europe's intransigence on the Iranian nuclear weapons issue. All while you're trying to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb, you just have companies and countries falling all over themselves to establish business within inside the country you know have we are are we in the west strong enough to wage a cold war two or is it's going to be some watered down version you know these it's i i know i have i'm asking

more questions than than answering them here around but at the end of the reality is is i don't know I can't predict the future on this stuff, but I don't see a positive outcome for us if Putin is successful in at the least partitioning Ukraine and at best. Obviously, if he takes control of the entire thing, that's a clear victory. But a partition, if that's accepted, you know, it's going to have to be brokered some way by the West, so it'll be accepted in some way, right? And so, yeah, I just, I'm as confused as anyone when trying to think this through to the next level. In fairness or, you know, perhaps a weakness of mine, I often get, you know, get caught in the moment. Right now I'm looking at a lot of trees and it's hard to step back and look at the forest.

I appreciate you pushing me to do so. Well, look, and no, please don't apologize for asking questions. Knowing what you don't know or maybe knowing what's not knowable and being thoughtful about why it's not and identifying the things that you need to learn in order to form real conclusions. I mean, I think policy analysis could probably use more of that. And I'm grateful for your insights today. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure.

I'm always happy to provide any insight, even if that results in questions, I couldn't agree with you more. A lot of times, what I see is, you know, policy analysts and policymakers, you know, act out on the policy, their policy desires. And, you know, look, a lot of criticism of Dom Rumsfeld, but his, you know, no knowns, no unknowns, that always stuck with me. I've always, you know, agreed, you know,

if you can't admit there are things you don't know, then you need to get out of this game because we do not have all the answers. The future is extremely difficult to predict how the West actually reacts to this. Will the Russians even win? And we can't predict these things. I think I know how these things will trend, at least on the military side. But there's a lot of factors involved here.

Maybe the Russians do lose. Maybe their morale issues and supply issues are bigger than anyone can anticipate. You know, there's so much that can go in here. But it's, you know, part of the interesting part of this job is trying to sort all that out. And, you know, the key too here is we have a lot of people talking about. things, Aaron, that have a very bad record of success in when tracking previous conflicts. And, you know, they're the recycled analysis, the recycled analysts themselves and commentators on this issue, I watch this and I say to myself, I just wish these news organizations

who put them on, the government organizations and the think tanks actually kept track records for people because if they did, I think they'd be really shocked at what they see. Bill Rogio of FD and Long Ward Journal. It was a great conversation. Thanks so much for joining. Thanks again. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.