Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/4/22 Douglas Macgregor on the Lost Opportunities to Leave Ukraine Better Off

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

This week on Antiwar Radio, Scott talks with retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor about the war in Ukraine. From the beginning, Macgregor has been very critical of the Biden Administration’s myopic insistence on escalation. Now, it appears that a divide has broken out within Washington about how much further the U.S. and NATO can go. Scott and Macgregor discuss this evolving dynamic and reflect on all the missed chances for peace that would have left Ukraine with more territory and fewer lives lost. Now, with what appears to be a massive Russian offensive in the works, Macgregor says the west must put an end to the war as soon as possible.  Discussed on the show: “Playing at War in Ukraine” (The American Conservative) “It’s Time to Bring Russia and Ukraine to the Negotiating Table” (New York Times) “Will Biden Gamble on a Ukraine Coalition?” (The American Conservative) Scott’s interview with Lyle Goldstein Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, sorry, I don't mean to go all FDR on you or anything, but here's the new deal. All the interviews are now going up first at Scott Horton's show.substack.com. Of course, they'll all be going up at scothorton.org the next day, and the archives going back to 1999, we'll still be free for you there at scotthorton.org. But I got to generate revenue, you know. For Pacifica Radio, November the 6th, 2000. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio.

All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear. your weapons. You can find my full interview archive, including this one. That'll be

5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at every video channel online slash Scott Horton Show. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. All right, you guys, on the line again, I've got retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, author of The Margin of Victory and Regular Writer at the American conservative and from time to time at least at the Libertarian Institute as well his latest at tack is called a playing at war in ukraine welcome back to the show dug how you doing sir fine thanks uh good good appreciate you joining us here today i want to talk to you first of all about this article in the new york times by charles a cupchin he is from georgetown university

the council on foreign relations and formerly the baroque obama administration and he wrote this piece in the New York Times called It's Time to Bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table So first of all, he makes some arguments But second of all, I think it's news that the New York Times ran this And that it's by an Obama guy

And a counsel on foreign relations guy And I wonder if you think You know, as a crumlinologist out here Reading the Tea Leaves with the rest of us Whether this indicates a shift Inside the American Establishment To if not your point of view Maybe at least Henry Kissinger's point of view

that, well, this has been fun, but it's time to start wrapping it up now, rather than risking making it worse. I think there's been a struggle inside the administration for some time now between those who feel that things have gone too far and that we should somehow or another intervene to provide a platform for an end to the fighting and those who think that they've got to prosecute this thing to the last Ukrainian. Now, the fact that this man, who, as you point out, Cupsian is connected to the left and he's also simultaneously a CFR type and probably what you would call a neocon of the left is significant. I think it should be taken very seriously that he would

go out on a limb like this and say this because that means he represents a substantial portion of the people in the NSC staff and elsewhere who think that this should come to an end. I also think it's because the truth is coming out. I don't know if you saw it or not, but a group of Australians managed to find bots that were anti-Russian pro-Ukrainian, sending out millions and millions of messages virtually from the beginning of the conflict, all of which were lies. And I think there's more and more evidence finally penetrating that this sort of eternal Ukrainian victory parade was always a mirage and an illusion that the Russians have crushed the Ukrainians that are getting ready to finish the job.

so I think all of that together contributes to this man's article yeah well okay so that's a very important point they put this in the Washington Post I'm sure you saw this two or three weeks ago they just buried the lead halfway through an article and said well the Biden administration recognizes that Ukraine cannot win this war outright ultimately it will have to be a negotiated solution I guess they think that they can get the Ukrainians in a position of better strength before they negotiate but they've already admitted they're not not going to be able to force the Russians out. They declare that no matter what it takes or how long it takes, we're going to help Ukraine completely force Russia all the way out of

Ukraine and including Crimea, while at the same time they admit that they know that that cannot work. Well, they've been lying to us about the war in Ukraine, about who is right, who is wrong, and who's done what to whom. Russia had always a legitimate reason for acting the way it did. And the Russians initially, the biggest mistake, I guess they made in retrospect, is that they moved in there very cautiously with the goal of minimizing casualties and destruction to infrastructure and conveyed the impression that they were somehow another week. That is not the case, but that was because Vladimir Putin genuinely thought that we and the Ukrainians would be negotiating parties early in the conflict. He assumed that no one wanted the destruction and loss of life that we've seen. He turned out to be wrong. Now, I guess we're rethinking the position, but there's a problem, Scott. I'm not sure Putin is going to react to us the way we would like at this point.

I think he's worried that whatever he does and whatever is promised will not be honored by the United States. And I say this because of what happened with the Minsk Accords. If we had stuck with the Minsk Accords, which essentially promised the Russians living in Ukraine, equality before the law and guaranteed their rights as citizens to speak Russian and continue to school their children in Russian. I don't think any of this would have happened. We decided not to bother with it. And we told our allies, Britain and France and Germany, to ignore it. And so they did. I just, I think he's got a real problem with believing anything we say. And to reinforce this, The current general who commands Russian forces in the Western theater, that is Ukraine and the Western, what we used to call the Western military districts of the former state, Soroviken, and his opening remarks when he took command pointed out that a quote-unquote Syrian solution for Ukraine is unacceptable.

Now, you have to understand, this man was in Syria, and he saw these spheres of influence, if you will, spring up. up with the Turks controlling the North, the Iranians and their Shiite allies in Iraq coming up from the South, and the United States in the West, the Assad regime holding on to its bit with the help of the Russians. And what he's saying is that when this is over, this solution is off the table. In other words, whatever comes out of this, NATO, the United States, and the West can have no presence whatsoever in Ukraine. So under the circumstances, what are we going to do if we negotiate? There's not much for us to negotiate.

And the Russians are in a position right now where they've got almost 700,000 troops surrounding Ukraine. And within a few weeks, I suspect they will attack. And that will be the end of the Zelensky regime and the end of the war, because they're going to go in with great force the way many people thought they would go in to begin with back in February.

Well, so I did recently, speak to Danny Davis, who served under you in Iraq War I, and who, of course, has been doing an absolutely fantastic job of keeping up on the day-to-day in the developments in the war. And he says that right now the Russians are building up a massive force inside Russia. And to him, the question, I think, only is, once the ground freezes, and I guess that's really important people need to understand. It means that they can drive around through the wilderness rather than how. having to stick to the roads and be afraid to getting stuck in the mud, right?

Once the ground is frozen, then they have more free rain. He says, once that happens, the only question is whether they're going to go for full frontal assault in the Donbass, just push from east to west, or whether maybe they'll cut through Belarus and flank the Ukrainians on their west and maybe cut off their weapon supplies coming in from NATO countries on their western border and that kind of thing. But either way, I think he seemed to think that is just a matter. a time essentially before, as you say, just the overwhelming quantity of Russian power defeats the Ukrainian military here. Well, it's more than that. I think there will be at least three

operational axes, one that comes out of Kerson and moves towards the Romanian border that also seizes control of Odessa in the south, which is historically a Russian city, always was Russian, was never Ukrainian. Another axis that will come down out of Belarusia and effectively cut off the Polish border and the west from interacting with Kief or Kiev, if you will. And then probably a third operational axis up along the DEPA river. That seems to be emerging.

And whether it is simultaneous or they will stagger these, I have no idea. but there's something else happening that people aren't really paying attention to the russians have now gotten control of their territory down in the south that they've annexed they've dressed if you will the defensive lines and the ukrainians have largely run out of gas down there literally and figuratively to launch any more serious counter attacks but the russians have actively baited the ukrainians into launching more counterattacks because from their standpoint the more ukrainian forces that attack, the more are destroyed. That means fewer Ukrainian forces to oppose the massive offensives that are coming. Secondly, almost every night now for the last several days,

we've had attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, command and control locations, secret police stations, this sort of business in Ukraine. Ukraine is almost now completely in the dark. They're running out of fuel. They don't have power in many cities. And the Ukrainian spokesman for the president have been talking openly about urging Ukrainians to evacuate from cities in Western Ukraine simply because there is no power. And remember, power is linked to so many things. It's linked to the purity of your water. It's linked to health and hospitals. The entire Western Ukrainian region is now in serious trouble. Is that just going to cause a brand new? civilian refugee crisis for Europe, too, as people who have stuck so far give up now?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is something else that European allies have to deal with. And the most recent op-ed that I wrote, which came out yesterday in the American conservative, talked about this Petraeus suggestion for a multinational task force of Poles, Romanians, and Americans with some other participants that could then march into Western Ukraine and somehow another rescue the situation. It's unclear. I tried to raise all the questions that should be raised and answered before even considering such a thing because I think right now that would be very dangerous.

Again, the Russians have put up with lies from the West about everything, about them, about what our intentions are, about what we want. We now have some sort of bizarre Russian government in exile that had a meeting on the 21st of October, just north of Warsaw. they say they're going to stand up some sort of Russian Duma in exile in November. We're playing with fire. Wow, I hadn't heard that. They're talking about creating Iraqi National Congress for the Russians?

Well, I think that's what's underway. And supposedly, oligarchs, and these are Ukrainian oligarchs, that have now had their property stripped away from them. Putin finally said, enough's enough, this week and took all of their property away from them. which, you know, makes sense, quite frankly. Well, it's what the Americans are doing. Yeah. And the other thing is the oligarchs, let's face it,

these people are hardly the top of the line in Ukrainian or Russian society. These people really do have ill-gotten gains. Sure. So the bottom line is that Putin is now doing all of the things that people urged him to do back in February and March. So I think the Rubicon has been crossed, Scott. So I don't know what you're going to, quote, unquote, negotiate with Moscow. I think Moscow is going to deliver a fait accompli.

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing about it, right, is the difference really came when he officially annexed, not just the Donbass, but also Zaprogia and Kurson, and then, you know, signed it and said that this is a done deal now. This is now officially Russian territory. And that is a huge escalation. right there because, right, he can't negotiate that away. He can never give Curzon back now. He can never give Zeprosia back now.

That would be backing down so drastically. Of course. And, you know, I don't know. He needs Sophrosia, right? Like, he needed that land bridge across the sea of Azov and Maripal to guarantee fresh water to Crimea and continuity of power from the Dombas to Crimea. Suprosia is a little bit more north there. I don't know if he's just getting greedy, but essentially to the point, he can't give these up in a negotiation.

That line, and he's drawn that with a black magic marker, and that's permanent, essentially, unless his military is simply forced out. And this is the thing that, you know, the American side, you hear all the time about how we might continue to escalate this war as well. And there's a piece in the Washington Post last week where they have all these think tank experts saying, oh, conventional war between America and Russia's, coming. We can't let them get away with winning this thing. And obviously, America's going to have to get involved. And this is, you know, part of your piece is based on the great American fraud. David Petraeus, never met a war that he didn't triple and then lose anyway, saying that it's time for America to go to war with Russia in Ukraine. Yeah, well, I try to point out in yesterday's op-ed how very foolish this is. You know, we keep talking about the Russians over the last

or eight months now, they are running out of ammunition. They're running out of missiles. They're running out of rockets. They're running out of everything. They're running out of soldiers. Well, that's all turned out to be nonsense. They haven't run out of anything.

The people running out of things, of course, are the Ukrainians. If we were to involve ourselves directly with the Russians, sadly, I think the Russians would relish the opportunity. I don't think people in the West understand how enraged the Russian population is with the United States. They see us as having orchestrated and not unjustifiably everything in Ukraine. We built this army to attack them. We funded it.

We supplied it. We trained it. And we are orchestrating the war effectively from Germany, from command and control structures that far away. And we continue to feed this monstrous war. Now we're importing mercenaries of various types and kinds, including former ISIS members, to fight. So from the Russian standpoint, the only way to end this thing is to march in and smash the opposition once and for all. Remember, the demands at the beginning of this thing were really quite modest. They wanted a neutral Ukraine.

And remember at the end of April, there was some evidence that Zelensky and his crew were willing to accept that. And then he said he wanted the rights and interests of the people in the two breakaway. republics to be respected. And he wanted recognition for the legitimate control of Crimea by Russia, which had controlled it effectively since 1776. All of those things were doable. All of those things were attainable. We rejected everything. And now the notion that we would intervene on the ground is ludicrous. With what? I mean, you're talking about cobbling together a multinational force. I've been in the army for a long time. I served with lots of different organizations. I can tell you, there's nothing worse on the planet than a multinational force.

And not only do you have differences in equipment and communications, you have differences in national attitudes and how far people are willing to go, it's a nightmare. And you're going to throw this at a 700,000-man Russian army that has absolute unity of command and control that reaches all the way to the very top to Sorovina and then back to Moscow and expect to be successful. what happens when you take casualties how are you going to resupply it how are you going to provide soldiers to come in and replace the losses there are over 100,000 dead Ukrainians

there are three or 400,000 wounded at least if we start taking casualties we have an army right now Scott that we can't even recruit for people don't want to join it they don't want to become part of the useless woke army so who are we kidding this this doesn't make any sense and then when they talk about the use of air power, we don't have integrated air defenses to protect Europe. We've never built those. We have some number of fighters and bombers, that's true. But what makes us think that they will not be shot down

by integrated air defenses at the Russian zone? The Russians have poured a lot of money and technology into that. So we would lose aircraft, which is something that we simply haven't done over the last 30 years. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts brokerage Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them. You need to put some

at least into precious metals. Well, Roberts and Roberts can set you up with the best deals on silver, gold, platinum, and palladium. And they've been doing this since 1977. Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you too. Call Tim Fry and the guys. at 800-874-9760. That's 800-874-9760, or check them out at r-r-rbi.co. That's r-rbi.co. You'll be glad you did.

Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home.

Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well. suggesting and making improvements all along.

Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level. and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org.

Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom, Real history, real economics, real education. It's just amazing that we're even talking about this. I mean, look, if I have a conflict of interest in this, I'm on the Ukrainian side. My wife has family in Odessa right now. But as a Texan and an American, I got to admit, Ukraine is east of what we're going to we ever used to call Eastern Europe, which we already had decided was outside of our sphere of influence. Ike Eisenhower was willing to sit and watch the Hungarians get crushed. And LBJ did nothing when, you know, during the Prague Spring. And Ronald Reagan refused to lift a finger

to help Polish solidarity because, hey man, you guys are on the wrong side of the line. I'm sorry. But now we're talking about a thousand miles east of there. Well, it doesn't make sense. There's also the nuclear question at the time. And it was very, very clear where the red lines were. There was no question. There was nothing vague. And we didn't particularly care for the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and we wanted it to end, but we weren't willing to risk a nuclear exchange with the Russians over it. Well, that ended. And then we got ourselves into trouble with this relentless push of NATO further and further to the east. And that's the origin of the current crisis. It never needed to happen. And then we had an opportunity

to neutralize Ukraine. And as a neutral state, there is nothing to prevent Ukraine from flourishing. If we look at Austria, for instance, Austria today, for the first time in its entire history, has a standard of living that's higher than the standard of living in Germany. And the Austrians have profited enormously from neutrality. When Eisenhower was president, he wanted to make more states in the region neutral. He favored neutrality for all the states in Eastern Europe and was willing to support it. Neutrality is not a bad thing.

particularly when the major powers are willing to guarantee it. Well, we've lost that opportunity. Now, the issue is if we go in on the ground, and this is my concern, and we end up taking serious losses, so much so that the American people are shocked and waken from their stupor and finally realize what the administration has done to them by dragging them into a war they would otherwise never fight, are we going to then say, well, if you continue this,

we're going to employ nuclear weapons? because that's the only way I see nuclear weapons being utilized by us in some crazy notion of saving face. Because remember, you've got Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO from Norway, runs around every opportunity gets us. Well, if it turns out that we lose in Ukraine, that Ukraine's loss will be viewed as a loss by NATO, and NATO will have lost, and we can't tolerate that. Well, this is the sort of nonsense that leads you down the past to a nuclear confrontation, Scott. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of the equivalent of Putin officially annexing all of these territories that are still in play in this fight. It's just huge escalation simply with language in a way that just makes the thing so much more dangerous. Well, what disturbs me most of all, Scott, is a complete disinterest in the plight of the people of Ukraine.

If anyone really cared about Ukrainians, and just to be truthful in advertising, I grew up with Ukrainians and Poles, but primarily Ukrainians in North Philadelphia in the 50s and the 60s. I loved them. They were wonderful people. But if you really cared about them, you would put an end to this war now. And you would agree to some set of terms that Russia can put up with, including neutrality for what remains of the Ukrainian state right now. because there's no positive outcome for the people that live in that country if this war continues. This war really needs to stop. And instead of thinking in terms of what does this look like for us, did we win or lose,

which is, frankly, as you point out, strategically irrelevant, the only interest we've ever had in what is happening in Ukraine is to stop the war. That's it. We have no interest in eastern Ukraine and who owns the natural gas fields there and who exploits them. We have no interest in who controls any part of that country today, but we should have a humanitarian interest in the place, and we should be interested in putting an end to the war. And it's astonishing to me that there is absolutely no one raising his voice or her voice in support of that. Instead, we have to listen to all this nonsense about Putin being Hitler.

Well, Mr. Putin may be many things, but he's certainly not Hitler, and he's definitely not Stalin. He is what he is, and the Russian people are behind him. His approval ratings have gone through the roof. They're in the high 80s. And that's because the people in Russia recognize the danger that we constitute in Ukraine to them. That's why we've got the war. That's another reason to put it into this, because we don't want that to poison our relationship with Russia in perpetuity. All right.

Now, let me ask you about what Lyle Goldstein said, because I interviewed him. He's formerly at the Naval War College. I know you're very familiar with his. Yeah, Lyle's great. And he's got a little bit different take from you on the capability of the Russian conventional force here. And he wrote a big piece for Brown University, which I interviewed him about last week, that essentially says, look at the chart. The Russians don't spend much money on their military and the kind of build up in the imagination of the Americans about Russian conventional capability. has, you know, really just like in the days of the USSR, it's been shown to be, you know, vastly

overestimated, that the numbers don't lie and that he thinks that they could be in real trouble, especially when you look at the level of commitment in terms of weapons and training by the Western powers and the putting in more missiles and more higher-end artillery pieces and these kinds of things, and that it could come down to a situation where the Russians decide that they built those low yield tactical nukes for a reason and that now's the time to go ahead and use them. And he seemed to be extremely concerned that the Americans, and he's saying, you know, Lyle, he's a smart guy. He was blaming the Americans for refusing to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this crisis before the war ever started. And he's absolutely

criticizing the entire national security establishment for keeping it going. instead of rallying around trying to have peace talks and figure out a way forward and all of that. But he is essentially saying he thinks that there is some likelihood that the American intervention on the side of Ukraine here could make the Russians feel like they really are being put in a corner and that they have no choice to then go ahead and use some tactical nukes. And then the slippery slope argument goes, use them or lose them. Once the taboo is broken and hay bombs start going off, then H-bombs start going off. then H-bombs start going off to, and that's the end of the world. So, and he was upset, man. It was a hell of a thing interviewing him.

And I kept being hyperbolic and hoping he'd kind of say, no, no, it's not that bad, Scott. But instead he kept saying, yeah, I think it's that bad Scott for an hour and a half. So I wonder what you think about all of that. Well, first of all, you know, I think the world of Lyle and he's someone that, you know, I periodically consult with because I revere his command of, uh, command of information and his understanding of Russia. However, I would say the following. First of all,

Lyle's absolutely right that back in January and February, we were dealing with a different Russia. And Russia was never the aggressive and dangerous power aimed at destroying NATO by no means under any circumstances. And their military was enough for the defense of Russia. And that was about it. that's changed and we have affected that change. I would also point out that Russia has a martial history and a very rich military culture

and they have enormous industries that are now completely revved up to the maximum extent possible to produce not only weapons and munitions, but also to support a much larger military establishment. That's what we're seeing emerge right now. This 300,000 man reserve mobilization is largely complete, and most of them have been integrated into formations and units that are forming up for this future offensive. But in many areas, this mobilization quietly continues with the result that you could see a much larger force in January and February than 700,000. And I've tried to point that out to people. My point is this, Russia has all that it needs in terms of high-end conventional military. power to deal with us if we try to intervene as well as with the Ukrainians. They don't need

nuclear weapons to deal with us. The second part is that our forces on the ground in Europe are very small. We have 100,000 troops in Europe. Well, that comes to maybe 25, 30,000 combat troops. That's not very much. The Polish military, which was larger and more robust a couple of decades ago, has actually gotten smaller and it has very little armor and what it has is this very large heavy armor that we utilize which means that it can't use any of the bridges in ukraine that it may have to cross the Romanian military is not in great shape and the Romanians are not a martial people and have no great history of military power so you're looking at a multinational force that may appear to be robust on paper but really isn't that then takes you into our air power

And the air power that we have is substantial, but it's a shadow of what it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago, we had thousands of fighters today. We'd be lucky to get five, six, seven hundred into the air over Ukraine. And in contrast, in 1990 and 91, thanks to precision guided microcircuitary that goes into all of the missiles, and thanks to the microcircuitary that allows computers in various radar arrays to compute solutions in fractions of a second, we're likely to lose a lot of that aircraft. So we are not, at least in reality, quite what Lyle thinks we are. In fact, I would argue that we are a shadow of our former selves militarily. So I'm much more concerned about the possibility that we go in and we end up taking losses

and that we are the ones that then fall back on the nuclear weapon. I don't think the Russians have any need for it. And if you look at the strikes that have been going on over the last few weeks. It's very impressive. I mean, obviously, the Russians have the satellite-based reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence assets, and collection assets that we do.

And in addition to that, they have the means to put our satellite arrays out of business. And by the way, you know, Lyle did say, too, that, you know, and by the way, I mean, Putin in his cabinet, his defense department and his right-hand man, Yvedev, and whoever, they've been

talking about nuclear weapons this whole time. But then last week, Putin said, ah, come on, we don't need to use nukes. We're not going to use nukes. And Lyle took that as hugely important. That statement was like turning the temperature down by a couple of degrees at least. Well, you've got, listen, just as we have fools and hotheads in our country, the Russians have fools and hot heads in theirs. Medvedev is a lightweight. And I wouldn't pay too much attention to what he says.

Sometimes he's used as a sounding board or is sent out. all right medvedev it's time for you to go public and make the following ridiculous statement and then we'll see what happens i wouldn't pay much attention to it putin is very much in control and his general officers that he's got around him are very solid people uh garrasimov the chief of staff and the others are very competent and i think this man sort of ikin is a no-nonsense commander you don't have senior russian officers running around bloviating like windbags on the scale of what we've got with people like Petraeus and others

and Millie who say, well, I called the Chinese defense minister and I calmed them down. You're not going to hear any of that nonsense because there's absolute control over the military by civilian leadership in Russia. I guess where I part ways with Lyle is exactly what you just said. Putin is not going to use nuclear weapons

and he doesn't need them. And he's right about that. And I think we're going to get an education here in the next few weeks. And I just hope that we shut up and get out of the way. If we're not going to intervene and say, look, we've gone far enough. We agree with you. You've made your point. Let's sit down and come to some sort of arrangement.

If we don't do that, which I think we should, by the way, you know I believe that. But if we don't, then we should shut up and stay on our side of the line and not get involved in this. Because if we do, we will see a Russia that is far closer to what the Soviet Union, Union was in the past and anything we've seen thus far. Yeah, I mean, that's already the crisis is the future. America's relationship with Russia going forward. I mean, God, that's a whole other interview. But I think it's important, just as you say, as this guy, Kupchin says, again, Obama's

guy riding in the New York Times, counsel on foreign relations establishment guy, saying, look, if Ukraine is not worth putting American infantry on the ground to fight for, well, it's not worth all this brinksmanship that could lead to a nuclear conflict between America and Russia either. It's time to sit down at the table. And, you know, by the way, though, you actually wrote a peace proposal right before or right after the war broke out and said, these are the lines we should negotiate on. And it's not far off of where we would start again right now, although maybe a couple of hundred miles. The line has moved probably a couple hundred miles to the west. Yeah. And again, remember in that piece, I talked about the various

neutral states that could provide the forces. But can, keep NATO out of it. This is the issue. We are trying to bully our way in. And again, the thing that's also very disturbing to me, and I'm sure you're similar in this regard, it's all this moral posturing in the West. You know, what is moral about fighting a proxy war that destroys another nation? There's nothing moral about that, nothing righteous about it. In fact, if anything, it's horribly immoral. If we're not willing to fight, then we should shut up and get out of there.

That was what Mearsheimer said in 2015. And I don't know if he used the same phrase when I interviewed him in 2014 about this, but after his foreign affairs piece, but in that famous speech that anyone can watch on YouTube, why the Ukraine crisis is the West's fault, it's this great quote where he says, America is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path,

and they're going to get wrecked. And I actually look that. up. It comes from Shakespeare. And in the original context, I don't know, but the idiom has come to mean a path that looks very nice, but has quicksand at the end of it or something worse. Yeah. No, that's absolutely right. And John Mearsheimer was always correct in his assessment. But once again, in order to be successful in international relations, you really do have to listen to the other side. We haven't listened to anything anyone has said. We've ignored everything that Putin has said. We're continuing to ignore what he says. And if we remain deaf to the

other side, then we're going to end up in a very bad position when this concludes with the destruction of Ukraine. So I agree with Lyle, but I don't agree with his assessment of the Russians. I think that if anything, we've created a monster now. We've convinced the Russians that they were mistaken. They were on the wrong path. And we're now going to see a far more robust and dangerous military capability over there than anything we've seen thus far. Yeah, that call-up of the reserves came as the direct result of the Ukrainian forces advance in La Hansk in mid-September there. And they just essentially said, okay, well, instead of a, I guess they're still calling it a special military operation, but they're about to, what, triple the forces almost. Well, no, actually, they...

Actually, Scott, they've stopped that. They've said the special military operation is over. Oh, now it's a war. Yes. And this is a clear and unambiguous signal that the gloves are off. No more nonsense. We are now at war. By the way, everyone in Russia is very comfortable with that.

That's what we need to understand. If there is any criticism of Putin in Russia right now that's significant, it's from the population that says, why didn't you crush these people right away? That's the issue. That's what we don't understand here in the United States. Yeah, I mean, they make it seem like the entire Russian population is united with the whole world against Russia when the whole world just means America and Western Europe. Yeah, and the other thing, too, is remember, we have China in the background, India in the background.

We have most of the non-European world, frankly, that is very poor. privately supportive of what Russia is doing for all sorts of reasons that have to do with global finance and tire, I think, exhaustion from dealing with us because we don't, Americans don't understand just how much power we have wielded in ways that were often detrimental to the interests of other people. You know what? A big problem that we have here, right? John Rob was on the show, talk about the Twitter swarm. You mentioned all the moralism and all the posturing in American politics right now, is there anywhere? Do we have someone who could play the role of Bobby Kennedy in saying, look, forget all the BS. Let's make a deal here, pal. I mean,

I actually am kind of sarcastic, but I'm out of ideas. I think maybe we send Henry Kissinger over there to make a deal. Oh, God. Let's not send Henry. At least he's friends. He has a previous relationship with Putin and has recommended that we tie this thing up and is respected on the American side. I don't know anybody else who could. Well, look, I don't have any easy answers for you, but I think there are people in Washington, you know, and I think it could be bipartisan who could serve in that capacity. But you're wasting, we're obviously wasting time sending somebody like Blinken or Lloyd Austin. These people are laughable. No one takes them seriously.

Maybe Burns? Burns has betrayed everybody because Burns has always known what was right and managed to do what was wrong anyway. he just came back from a visit to Brazil where he went down there to officially intervene in the election. I think he's lost all credibility. It would have to be people that are not holding key positions in the cabinet right now. They would have to be different. And I think they'd have to be bipartisan. I mean, sending any of these people, he might as well send that fool Pompeo, who likes to show up and start wars wherever he goes. Where's Bill Bradley? He's dead, right? Like, who do we got? Who has a

reputation on both sides that's credible enough to do it i mean it like i maybe it's just some wonk i've not heard of but well i still think that uh your best bet the one man whose hands are totally clean in this matter is probably randpole that's a good idea senator randpole would have the gravitas and uh the common sense and the reputation for uh honesty the problem is who what kind of uh guaranteed is he's have if he goes over and does something that it will be supported when he gets back because you have so many maniacs in the and i use that word judiciously people that don't know what they're doing that have a very false picture of the world who still live in the in the early 1990s and

in the unipolar moment who don't want to come to any agreement with anybody who think they can dominate the world what about those people are they going to be shouted into silence? Are we going to keep them under control? So, you know, my view at this point is if we get out of the way, shut up and do nothing, that's probably the best option. To intervene in this thing on the ground is an invitation to disaster, and we shouldn't think about it or even do it. Maybe the midterm elections will help us out in some ways.

I don't know. I'm very skeptical that we'll see much positive change as a result of the midterms. I'm one of these people that is very disappointed in the Uniparties. Scott. Hey man, you guys should all sign up for the Libertarian Institute's email list. Will Porter's been putting together this great newsletter every week. And all you got to do is go to the bottom of the page at libertarian institute.org and sign up there. It's real dang good. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee Hot Sauce Company. Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors, garlic habanero, honey habanero, pineapple habanero, Poblano Halapeno, and the Blood Orange Ghost. They're all so good,

swear. And for a limited time, Tennessee hot sauce company is featuring official Scott Horton hotter than the sun thermonuclear hot sauce. It's full of Carolina Reapers, Scorpion Peppers, Dr. Pepper, hydrogen isotopes, and all kinds of things that'll burn your tongue clean off. Seriously, it's really good. Get yourself a hot sauce subscription. Spend $40 or more and use promo code Scott to get a free bottle of hotter than the sun hot sauce. That's tnhot sauceco.com. Hey, y'all got to check out these awesome busts of our hero, the great Ron Paul. They're made by the renowned sculptor Rick Casali, the 13 inches tall hand-painted bronze resin based on Casale's brilliant original.

You'll may have seen mine in the background on my bookshelf in some recent interviews. The thing is unbelievable. Check out this incredible piece of art at Rick Casale.com slash Ron Paul, and you'll see what I mean. Use promo code Horton and you'll save 25 bucks, and this show will get a little kickback too. that's rick casali dot com slash ron paul cassali is c a s a l i rick casali dot com slash ron paul and there's free shipping too yeah i mean well look the leadership of the republican party are absolutely horrible on this and you know try to attack biden in the same old conventional way the democrats are effeminate and weak and aren't doing enough like us big macho tough guy republicans

blah blah blah and they can't they could easily just say biden it's right reckless and should be more conservative and cautious. See how easy that is, but nope. Nobody brings up the simple truth that 200,000 Americans over the last two years had died as a result of fentanyl poisoning. Why aren't the troops on the Mexican border? Stopping the flow of drugs and illegal human trafficking into the United States. That's where they belong. They don't belong in Eastern Europe. There's nothing for them to do over in Eastern Europe. That's a lot of nonsense. We're provoking the Russians. That's stupid, counterproductive. We're not defending ourselves.

How can we ignore 200,000 dead Americans? Those are the kinds of losses, Scott, that you take in a war. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. And, of course, the solution is, you know, regardless of border security, you know, positions, you've got to legalize less lethal forms of opiates that people even can abuse, but without killing themselves with, you know, the new oxycontin and fentanyl so much more powerful than heroin. And people, essentially, they miss dose and accidentally kill themselves.

But that's the 200,000 that you're talking about. I have a friend who's dead essentially accidentally from eating these stupid pills or however it was he was taking it. When if he'd just gone to Walgreens and bought something at a lower dose that he knows exactly what he's getting, then he'd still be an addict, but he'd be. be alive and not dead. And that goes for the other couple of hundred thousand of them. But I wanted to ask you one more thing about the danger of nuclear war here, which is about miscalculation and mistakes and accidents and this kind of thing. I read a piece. I'm sorry I can't give credit because I forgot who it was, Doug, but it was about how America, we have such a satellite presence

around this planet. Any rocket takes off from anywhere. We know it instantly, maybe before it happens. And we have just absolute, you know, God's eye surveillance over Russia and crack all their codes and all these things. Russia does not have that. They have some satellites and they have some radars and things. They have nothing like the capability that they even had during the days of the Soviet Union in terms of their global presence and, you know, radar stations in further flung places in the empire, this kind of thing. And so essentially there, you know, got one eye, with a cataract compared to what America has in our surveillance of them. And, of course, Trump tore up the Open Skies Treaty.

So now they can't fly their planes over our bases to reassure themselves that we are not mobilizing for nuclear war. And so I, and then the idea is that that makes them that much more nervous and their trigger finger that much itchier. And that if the computer gives a bad readout, a missile is launched from somewhere and there's miscommunication. in the chain of command, they're not going to take chances. They're going to assume it's a first strike and go ahead and launch. Whereas before, during a time of easier tension, we've had close calls where they didn't launch because they thought, come on, why would America be striking us now? And so they ignored the computer when it made a mistake. And so then there's the idea that, well, this time they wouldn't ignore it. They would go with the mistake rather than take the

risk that it is one. What do you think? Well, I think you're talking about Ted Postal, who's done a lot of good work on the early warning systems. And his point has been two-fold. That is who it was, yeah, a few months back. Two-fold, one is that Russia is really regionally focused. It's not globally focused as we are. And then secondly, that some of its early warning gear is antiquated and that we should talk to the Russians about improving their surveillance

from an early warning standpoint. Well, I think Ted's right. The problem is, you know, we're not talking to them about much of anything. And at this stage of the game, we're, we are where we are, whether we like it or not. And I certainly wish that they had better visibility. But we always had the chance. Remember when we put these anti-missile, supposed anti-missile systems into Romania on the grounds that they were somehow another protecting Europe from Iranian missiles, which of course was absurd, you know, if we were

really interested in getting along with the Russians, we could have brought Russian officers over there to come into the facility and see it. And at the time, I was on active duty. I actually recommended that we examine that as an option. And of course, people said, you're out of your mind. Why would you ever do a thing like that? But I think that's the sort of thing that should happen. Can you tell me what year that was, Doug? Because I got to coach you for my talk on that. This is before I left in 2004, and this was a discussion of what was going to go into Romania. And people understood right then and there that if you go into Romania and you build this anti-missile system to protect everyone from Iran, which is absurd, that you

were threatening Russia and that the Russians would regard this as aimed at them. And, you know, I simply made the remark at the time, well, that's easily fixed, invite a party of Russian officers to come over and inspect this i mean you could set up a liaison officer to make sure that there's no concern and of course at that point you know everyone was already beginning to treat russia in a way that was hostile that shouldn't have been the case and this is this sort of desire to see hostility where there is none is now building real hostility in a way that is very dangerous of the long term but you know ted ted's work is excellent i think he makes good points But we're stuck with what we have.

The good news is that in one instance where it looked as though we had launched a first strike against the Russians, a Russian lieutenant colonel on his own initiative simply shut it down and said, that's impossible. It didn't happen. So they have some people with brains over there, and we have some people with brains here. The point is we need to get some more sober-minded individuals into key positions who are not obsessed with hatred and hostility for Russia, China, and anyone else that we pick on any given day. That doesn't mean we're fools. It doesn't mean we're all Eagle Scouts,

and we dismiss out of hand the possibility that we can be deceived or that people will sometimes lie to us. That's not the issue. But this implacable hostility is dangerous, and that's where we are. You know that. Washington is just full of hatred and hostility. And the people that run around that are quick to stand up and poor buckets of filth and abuse all over the Russians on the Hill are frequently people

who know absolutely nothing about Russia, nothing about Eastern Europe. They couldn't identify a Ukrainian, a Slovak, a Pole, a Tartar, or anybody else. And it's annoying as hell, to be honest with you, the level of understanding on the Hill is just minimal. Yeah. And I guess that's just, it's like social. It's unavoidable. Yeah.

It's, it's just like social psychology class in junior college. That's all that's going on here. It has nothing to do even with Ukraine. It's all, you know, how they fit in with each other. And all of that, like the public choice theory. But there's no national interest. There's just the interest of the individual humans with government jobs. And a lot of time, their interests, well, like being a hawk on Ukraine.

It doesn't require knowing the first thing about it. It just requires knowing that CNN is going to make me look good if I take this position today. that surface, very surface level kind of incentive structure built in without any real need for expertise. It's always, can't someone else do it, you know? And like I remember, Max Blumenthal interviewed a bunch of congressmen on the way in when they were going to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution back in 2019. And so many of these congressmen just looked at him like, they never even heard of Yemen or Yemen. You know, they didn't know nothing about it.

And the one guy looks at him and goes, look, my thing is taxes. They're like, this is just some guy. Like, there's no reason in the world why he should be helping decide whether we're murdering Yemenis or whether we're not. He is just like an accountant from the Midwest somewhere, which is fine to be an accountant, but you just shouldn't be in charge of killing people if you don't know nothing about the people that you're killing, but that's the form of D.C. It's how the whole thing operates, I guess.

Well, Scott, you're 100% right. The problem is the way government was set up here, that the expectation was that the people that became president or the people that occupied key positions in the cabinet would be more knowledgeable and that they would ultimately be tasked with the responsibility to guide foreign and defense policy. That hasn't worked out very well for us. We've had much the same sitting in the White House or in the various cabinet positions as we do on the Hill. We can't afford that anymore. It's been an amateur hour in Washington for a long time. Amateur hour could get us all killed. And that's where we are right now.

Okay, one more thing before I let's go. I want to know more about this Mark 41 missile launcher situation in Romania and Poland. As you said, the excuse under W. Bush was we're preventing Iran from nuking their arch rival Poland? Huh? That's funny. That was the argument at the time, the rationale we told the Russians. well, we're protecting Europe from a potential Iranian missile launch, which, of course, the Russians dismissed out of hand as laughable nonsense.

But so... And that's where we are. Right. But now, okay, so Iran never had missiles that could reach Poland. They're not making nuclear weapons. Our new nuclear posture review reaffirms. I just talked with Ted Snyder about this reaffirms that our intelligence agencies know for a fact. The Iranians aren't even trying to make nuclear bombs.

That whole thing was always a hoax. But then, as George W. Bush said then, Doug. He said, look, the Russians should not be concerned about this because they know that the number of anti-missile missiles that we're installing in these missile launchers there, the Mark 41 missile launcher, importantly, a dual-use launcher. He said, there's not nearly enough anti-missile missiles in here to shoot down an incoming Russian barrage. So they should know that it couldn't possibly be for that purpose because it's such a limited thing. so it must trust us. It's just for Iran. But then I think the Russian's interpretation of that was, okay, you're right. You don't have enough missiles in there to shoot down an incoming barrage by us, but it's a dual-use launcher, and you could put Tomahawk cruise missiles in there,

which can be tipped with H-bombs. I think under current treaties, they're not, but they could be configured to be tipped with H-bombs. And that's what you were talking about. Well, we'll just invite the Russians to come and look in the missile holes every once in a while and see that that is an interceptor, not a tomahawk. Everybody good? Okay, see you next month, right? And that's what we could do. But then the idea is, I think the Russians fear was that the whole thing was a pretext.

It was either a pretext to make money or it was a pretext to put nuclear cruise missiles in there in violation of the INF treaty. And this was the fear that you were proposing these inspections to preempt. But so what I'm trying to get to here with all this battling and rambling thing, Thank you for your patience, is what the hell are they doing? Why are they putting these missile launchers in there? It's obviously not to intercept anything from Iran. It's obviously not to be able to intercept an incoming barrage from Russia, as W. Bush said. Is it so they can sneak Tomahaw-Cruz missiles in there, at least someday?

Was that the plan? Or it's just, this is the W. Bush administration doing things, and this is the best they can do, and it doesn't have to make sense at all, or what? because Obama continued it. Trump continued it, of course. It's going on right now. Well, why are Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania and Bulgaria, all members of NATO? Why is that necessary?

I mean, it's the same question. And if you're a Russian and you look west and you understand that all of the people that are on your periphery are anti-Russian. The word for Ukraine, Ukraina, means periphery, margin, on the margin. In other words, all the people that are on the edge beyond the borders of the Russian-speaking world tend on the whole to be anti-Russian. Now, that's largely due to the Russians. But the problem nevertheless is if you're a Russian and you know that, and suddenly these kinds of things show up on your border, and we show up and arm these formations in all of these countries with top-grade weaponry with the goal of theoretically defending themselves against the Russians,

and now we want to organize them to march with us into Ukraine. What do you, what do you as a Russian in Moscow conclude? So whatever you say at this point is going to be treated with a certain amount of suspicion and disinterest, Scott. So I think we're well beyond just launchers in Romania. We've got a bigger problem. And we could have sat, could have sat down with Putin and worked out a number of things. We had a regimen in place about exercises and certain limits on the numbers of conventional forces. We at one point told the Russians, we would never push U.S. forces beyond the Odonaisa. Here we sit. In other words, what can we say at this point that's going to convince the Russians of very much of anything? If I were a Russian, I'm not sure

I'd believe very much of what we say. All right, you guys, that's Colonel Douglas McGregor. The book is The Margin of Victory and his latest piece at the American Conservative. It's a great takedown of the great American fraud, David Petraeus. It's called Playing at War in Ukraine. Thank you, Doug. Appreciate you. Okay, Scott. Bye-bye. And that's it for Anti-War Radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton.

Find the full interview archive, 5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 9 to 9.30 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.